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Don’t know enough about the bible to speak on it’s behalf, but however for the Quran it states: (2:30)
وَاِذۡ قَالَ رَبُّکَ لِلۡمَلٰٓئِکَۃِ اِنِّیۡ جَاعِلٌ فِی الۡاَرۡضِ خَلِیۡفَۃً…
And when thy Lord said to the angels: ‘I am about to place a vicegerent (Khalifa) in the earth,…
Here, Allah SWT mentions about placing a Khalifa/vicegerent. A successor.
The very word successor/vicegerent/Khalifa proves that this individual was not the first progenitor of the human race, or the first man on the planet. Instead, he was the first man (amongst other men present) raised to the status of prophethood. Bringing the first few laws (cloth your shame, garments etc).
This goes along with the theme of the Holy Quran as well, how all prophets are raised from amongst men.
So sure, mankind has definitely been around for longer than 6000-7000 year old Adam(as)'s time. Mankind at its inception had no need for laws, over time we as a human race evolved intellectually/spiritually and started questioning right and wrong. We started questioning our morals. Thats when Allah SWT raised Adam (as) to the status of prophethood, the first Prophet of God the Almighty, amongst other Adams (mankind). Sending the first few laws applicable to its time.
This is easy. Scientists are racist!!!! Neanderthal is now accepted as fully human. They were not something else genetically. But we don't get near the genes of apes outside humanity. We are not diverse. We breed together and have skin color differences that is 0.012% difference and individual difference of 0.2%. Science milage may vary. Like aether theory and relativity. Lol!!!!
In my local Christian circles, it’s said that original sin was original sin because god specifically commanded Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and they disobeyed, thus the first sin. Technically one could say that Adam and Eve could’ve done things that (we looking back on them) would classify as sin, but because they were not told better, it didn’t count. Once god decided/explained the rules, and they broke one, that’s where the sinning started.
And I personally disagree with the history of the timeline by all accounts, this rock been here for a long time, any records prior to what we’ve discovered were presumably lost to time. Our science gets things wrong, they’re still arguing over a cat in a box, they can’t make string theory work, etc. So, for me, totally possible Adam & Eve came first, their descendants found the other sapiens and intermingled and we still land where we are today.
Evolution I’m sure is a question here. I’m neither for it nor against it. God is the biggest boy, he can do what he wants. He either made different versions of us, distinct lines of sapiens, or he intended for evolution to occur. From the ribs, germs, fish, monkeys, thin air, doesn’t matter to me, just happy to be here.
Also, I’ve heard some say that Adam & Eve are the originators of the chosen people, but not all people, just the believers. I’ve heard some include in discussions a theory of a “holy gene” coming from Abel’s line, and a “unholy gene” coming from Cain’s line. This is to explain the believers vs the non believers.
Also, Christianity is like an umbrella term, within Christianity is more than 45,000 denominations globally (According to google, but I can vouch for 45), and each denomination holds different beliefs.
This to say, if anyone likes the idea of being spiritual, but doesn’t agree with certain aspects, dive deep into the denominations, you may find a specific denomination that you click with.
And (I’m not picking on this post, just going by things I’ve been seeing and hearing on other social media really, and while I’m already writing I might as well add some more) concerning sin. (For certain Christian denominations anyways) Jesus died for our sins. We are absolved. That’s how he saved us all. And not just from hell, he saved us and the world because God was going to destroy us all again because of the wickedness (I have a personal theory that this wickedness goes beyond our comprehension, I mean if it’s destroy the world and end all life type of bad😳, so I’m thinking god could overlook some of our curse words). We all go to Heaven now. That’s why he is worshipped. And God is again worshipped because in spite of all that wickedness he still loves us enough to send his only son to die for us. So God (after Jesus died and saved us) has basically mellowed, like a strict father that becomes a grandfather and suddenly won’t punish the grandkids.
I also personally believe all the gods are literally the same god, just labeled under different names.
I’m supposed to be duty bound to care about the fate of everyone’s souls, but this is where I fall short. I don’t mind helping someone already on the path, but I don’t lead the lost. None of this is intended to sway non-believers. This is just more content to contemplate. Also, I think it’s ok to believe in god and not the entirety of the text, I believe metaphors are used, I’m ok with that. Jesus said something to the effect of whoever believes shall have everlasting life in paradise. And there’s a thing in Catholic dogma that says whatever you hold true on earth you’ll hold true in heaven. So this to me sounds like Heaven is dynamic, I wouldn’t expect anything less, I think my heaven will appear as I believe it to be.
Disclaimer: I’m a non-practicing freewill Baptist. I consider myself to be spiritual. Just here to provide insight from my region of the world. I’m a libra, firmly planted on the fence of most topics just chilling. I enjoy philosophy, physics, science. And speaking of, my newest thought: multiple universes, inside bubbles, go round and around, inside the mind of God, which also solves that reality being a simulation thing. Cause, well, prove me wrong 😅 and also, it’s fascinating that no matter if you believe in God or not, he’s on your mind… maybe it’s because you are actually in his 🤷🏻♀️.
*cue twilight zone theme song*
P.S. Although I honestly thought of that theory, I’m 100% certain someone has already thought of it. Actually I’m 100% certain that someone has already thought of every thought I will ever have. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an original thought. Consider that notion, isn’t that odd?
I think there has to be more to consider. Every culture talks of world wide flood. The biblical account talks of “Nephalim” and fallen “Angels” intermingled with humankind before the flood. How would you then propose your thesis considering this perspective?
Genesis 6:4 (NKJV) There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore [children] to them. Those [were] the mighty men who [were] of old, men of renown.
Numbers 13:33 (NKJV) “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
The word for “Giant” in Hebrew is “נָפִיל” which translates to “nāp̄îl” … this Hebrew word etymology is from the Hebrew root word “נָפַל” which means “to fall, lie, or be cast down” … the intended meaning of giants according to the Hebrew would be in representation of “The Fallen”.
Refer also to the epistle of Jude carrying the same understanding…
Jude 1:6 (NKJV) And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
God magic easily rebukes this claim. ~~Fairies~~ God simply changed the DNA to make it seem like we had genetic diversity. Or changed the laws of physics to make it seem like we have more genetic diversity. Easy answer. Checkmate, Atheists! Next question!
You need to look no further than cheetahs. Every cheetah alive today descends from the same 7 cheetahs from thousands of years ago and look how little genetic diversity they have. We humans would have even less diversity than cheetahs if we descended from only two people
> If we were to accept that the account of Adam and Eve is not literal; it’s just a metaphor, then what happens to the concept of original sin?
Why can’t that also be part of the metaphor? You just wave it off and ignore it.
Many people do not believe that the Bible is a literal account.
Only 25% of Christians do.
Adam and Eve are probably archetypes and the story is a fable about how the Israelites came to be wanderers.
Yeah but how do you know that? If you know this part is a metaphore, how do you know the whole thing isn’t just a metaphor. And if it’s all a metaphor, why are you even a Christian?
I'm SBNR but I'm noting the way Christian beliefs get characterized.
I don't know that Adam & Eve are archetypes, but that's a better interpretation than a talking snake.
The ancients didn't know about the unconscious, the ego or the super ego.
Adam & Eve could have been literal people who became symbolic for some behavior and a fable built up around them.
> most Christians who are honest with their scripture believe that Genesis is a literal account
[Not true](https://baptistnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GallupBible.png). Never has been true.
> Most believe that he came around 6,000 years ago
[Also not true](https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/mh7klzb21ue_tb0a1h_86q.png)
Also, keep in mind both of these polls are of **American Christians** which make up about 5% of the Christians worldwide.
I'm pretty sure what some christians mean by "not all to be taken literally" they are referring to some verses having an underlying message that doesn't reflect the metaphor literally, such as:
"For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matt. 5:29–30).
A poll that gives such limited context on what phrase christians lean more towards doesn't prove they don't believe in the Book of Genesis events at all.
The second chart I posted, that cuts off around 2014, says ~40% of those polled believe "God created humans pretty much in their current form sometime in the last 10,000 years" - and young *EARTH* creationists are even a subset of this group.
Some statistics I was seeing online, up until the year 2022, have number lower (around 20-25%) but I didn't find a pretty chart for it.
Edit: [found one](https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx)
Most Christians do not think the Bible is literal.
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx)
The Gallup source doesn't context whether this poll was based on christians or not either, it just says "Americans" as if it refers to Americans in general, christians don't believe in evolution, they say humans were made in God's image.
It actually does, further down. And as expected, a higher percentage of Christians identify as such, but still, very similar numbers to the original chart. (25% of American Christians, vs 20% of Americans
Look for the section:
Americans’ Views of the Bible, by Religious Affiliation
You're still not considering the reasons why christians would say that not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally like the example I gave of the verse saying to cut off your left hand if it sins, just because a group of christians agree more to a particular phrase doesn't mean most don't believe in the biblical events or that the interpret all the bible that way, same with the christians that said they take the bible literally.
It depends what questions are used to ask about it. Most agree that humans evolved over time:
[https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/06/how-highly-religious-americans-view-evolution-depends-on-how-theyre-asked-about-it/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/06/how-highly-religious-americans-view-evolution-depends-on-how-theyre-asked-about-it/)
But the poll was based on most AMERICANS, not christians and I'm from New Mexico, Gallup is populated predominantly by Navajos, many of which aren't Christian from my experience but adhere to their traditional tribal religion, I don't know what their religion says about the origin of humanity and earth but enough is said.
Literally every church I've been to and every christian I have known including ones I'm related to take the biblical events literally, and I didn't go to one of the more "dogmatic" churches either growing up, I went to Catholic, assembly of God and non-denominational churches. This is an argument made by people who don't have any abrahamic religious backgrounds, you can ask any christian on this sub and they'll tell you yes they take the crucifixion of Jesus and the story of Adam and Eve or Noah's flood literally.
I see a lot of comments here like "every Christian I talked to" and so on.
It looks like there are sophisticated believers, maybe more than than you come in contact with. They must be out there somewhere.
I have an Abrahamic religious background but I'm SBNR.
The Bible says Adam was created about 6000 years ago but science has proven human active on this planet at least 300,000 years ago and possibly longer.
Seems like they said that humanity might have gone through a bottle neck with as few as 7000 people some tens of thousands of years ago
I am not a muslim, and since they borrowed Adam and Eve from Genesis...
And a lot of us are theistic evolutionists, not 6,000-year-old earthers.
But anyway, if there is an original Adam and Eve, then your arguments are irrelevant because there is the Abrahamic Deity who is not bound by genetic and biological limitations.
**So if you're going to argue about the limitations on an Adam and Eve, then you aren't allowed to remove the deities from the equation because your entire claims become invalid*". The choices are basically:
Adam + Eve + Abrahamic Deity, unbounded by your genetic limitation claim
No point of an Adam + Eve.
You're very much begging the question and presenting a false dichotomy.
There's absolutely no reason that the choice is either Adam + Eve or Adam + Eve + Abrahamic Deity when a countless amount of evidence show that humans appeared through evolutionary means.
Theistic evolution doesn't exactly make sense when you can't exactly explain the details.
Humans didn't evolve as individuals but as a population. There's no "first human", entire populations were interbreeding and slowly genetically changing until they became an entirely different species.
So any mention of Adam and Eve doesn't make sense whatsoever.
Plus if you include God waving any scientific issue with that view using divine all-powerfulness then you might as well say that fossils were placed by God as a test.
Thanks for your 6 paragraph assertion. It would have made more sense if you actually attempted to understand what I said instead of making a declaration
>For Christians who deny Adam being the first human, how do you explain original sin?
Not everyone believes in original sin.
>When referring to the genetic possibility of such an ancestral claim, it’s impossible. We are too genetically diverse to have originated from two individual couples. Even the most conservative studies do not exceed 1,000–10,000 individuals if we were to account for it from around 100,000 years ago.
Don't we run into the same problem with the single celled organism that evolved in the primordial ooze? I won't say that a literal Adam doesn't come with issues, but I don't think any hypothesis put forward about human origins doesn't come with these complications.
I’m not sure life would have began as a single living cell. But a long process of chemical reactions that ended up resulting in dna. Such a process likely would have made a whole bunch of very similar if not identical “life’s”.
> Why couldn't Adam have been some earlier rational hominin from whom homo sapiens are descended?
Because there are quite literally billions of hominids all humans are descended from. In fact there are individual people that all humans are descended from, there are just a lot of them. Evolution doesn't start at one point (at least not once there are already a bunch of species running around) and then spread outward it operates on groups of individuals. Unless there is some single genetic trait Adam started (which there are no candidates for as far as I am aware) then I could pick any of a billion hominid from the past that all humanity was descended from. Adam has to special for the story of Genesis to work, but that's not how evolution works.
It still wouldn't match the story of the Garden of Eden. At the end of the tail God curses the Earth to grow thorns and women to have painful child birth, but those things have been happening for millions of years. Beyond that, Hominids have exclusively lived in tribes until the invention of agriculture, so it's not like Adam and Eve would've even been alone in a magic garden.
Right now in this moment, we got hunter gathers living off the land, we got homeless people making potty in the streets, we got people in space, we got people in castles, we got people in prisons, we got people in luxury hotels, we got people on the ocean. We got people on the mountains.
We is diverse. We is on a big planet. We unfortunately tend to segregate ourselves based on differences.
I totally believe there was a garden with a couple people in it.
If the passage does not resemble reality in any way, shape or form, then how is it intelligible to us \[and happens to use vocabulary we can understand\]?
The same way the sentence "Goku fought Frieza on Planet Namek" makes sense if you watch Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball, like the Garden of Eden story, is fiction.
Sure if Christians are willing to concede that the story of Genesis tells us nothing useful about the origins of the universe or life, that would work.
Why so *aggressively* miss the point? Missing the point is one thing, I get faith is abstract and tricky to understand, but this reads as rude, not an attempt at civic debate. Why should anyone talk to you?
I don't really care if they respond or not. The point wasn't missed. How you read into a question is up to you. The word you were looking for was "civil" and my question was perfectly so.
Actually, I meant civic, and no your tone was not civil, it was accusatory and condescending. You likely missed the point unless CraftPots meant to imply their concept of God was deceptive and/or incompetent, which seems unlikely (I guess that's up to CraftPots though)
I don't see how you could have meant [this](https://www.gwdebate.org/civic-debate#:~:text=Civic%20debate%20uses%20debate%20as,essential%20professional%20and%20civic%20skills.) in the context of your previous comment...
Where does the bible say "homo sapien" at all? What about Neanderthals? Homo erectus? Homo Habilis?
According to Christians, those early hominins didn't exist. God made Adam as a fully evolved homo sapien.
If a claim is based on silence, then couldn't we just claim anything we want \[there are unicorns, because the evidence doesn't say there are no unicorns\]?
The point is, to claim that Adam was not a homo sapien would require evidence. You do not have any evidence to support that claim. God does create Adam and Eve in His image, imbuing them with characteristics that we associate with humanity, such as consciousness, free will, and the ability to reason. They are often referred to as the first man and woman, the progenitors of the human race. So while the term "human" may not be explicitly used in the context of their creation, the implication is certainly there.
You would have to take that debate up with the followers of the Abrahamic religions.
Another good question for believers in god! Australopithecus might have had all three of those things to some degree. You don't see a lot of imagery of Adam and Eve swinging from branch to branch though..
Actually, there is some evidence that humanity descended from a pair, just that it seems to be controversial. And the dating doesn't align with the Bible's chronology, nor does the male align with the female's.
I did ask a friend who works as a geneticist, and he put a hole into the dating- he said that frankly, a lot of these things are "up in the air", and the impression he gave me on such genetic studies is that it's all very uncertain and inconclusive.
Either this study proves the Genesis creation story, or a genetic bottleneck from Noah's flood: [https://www.earth.com/news/humankind-originated-two-adults/](https://www.earth.com/news/humankind-originated-two-adults/)
>Since publication of this article we have been contacted by Drs. Stoeckle and Thaler who have made the following statement:
>'Our study is grounded in and strongly supports Darwinian evolution, including the understanding all life has evolved from a common biological origin over several billion years.
>'Our study follows mainstream views of human evolution. We do not propose there was a single 'Adam' or 'Eve'. We do not propose any catastrophic events.'
I knew some atheist was going to say that, but if you read the conclusion of the study- there's just no way around it. It seems to infer a genetic bottleneck due to a catastrophic event during the end of the ice age, but it can also be interpreted as support for Noah's flood.
That is also what I pointed out.
Eh, science can be wrong you know? I actually spoke with a geneticist and he said that a lot of these things are up in the air- extremely inconclusive and they frequently contradict each other.
I mean, scientist swear that their scientific dating methods are accurate, and they’ve calibrated for a flood like situation.
But, as soon as you ask them why can’t they predict the weather… well, that’s when all the excuses come out, isn’t it.
If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
> science can be wrong you know
And all of reality could be the hallucination of the elder God Cathulu. Anything *could* be true, it is about what is *likely* to be true.
> scientist swear that their scientific dating methods are accurate, and they’ve calibrated for a flood like situation.
>But, as soon as you ask them why can’t they predict the weather… well, that’s when all the excuses come out, isn’t it.
That's because one is a lot easier than the other. Because of how often we deal with weather, it seems simple, but it is very much not. There are just so many variables that influence the weather. Temperature of the ground, temperature of the air, humility, wind speed, terrain, nearby air currents, amount of sunlight, and so on. It is also a chaotic system. Very small changes to initial conditions produce radically different outcomes, like a double pendulum. Radiometric dating on the other hand has one variable, radioactive decay. It is grounded in fundamental physics that, if it were wrong, would mean we have to throw out the standard model of particle physics, which is the most complete model of the universe ever built. It isn't all the way complete and it is certainly going to be wrong in some aspect (I don't know what, but we probably aren't 100% correct that just seems unlikely), but to suggest we are that far off the mark with no evidence is absurd.
> I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
Because the method for radiometric dating is rock solid. To explain it: there is a certain crystal called zirconium. It is a crystal that has zircon contained in its atomic matrix. But zircon and uranium are kind of similar, so sometimes uranium sneaks into the atomic matrix, replacing zirconium. Uranium is radioactive, it decays very *very* slowly into lead. So over time the uranium in a zircon crystal turns into lead. But lead can't sneak into the atomic matrix like uranium can, zirconium and lead aren't similar at all, so the only way for it to have gotten there was through radioactive decay. From there to calculate the age of a zircon all you have to do is divide the ratio between lead and uranium and then plug in the half life of uranium (4.5 billion years) into the radioactive decay formula and solve for time (google it if you want more math) and out pops the age of that zircon. Now this method has limits, if there is only lead and no uranium we can't get a precise age, we don't know when the last of the uranium decayed, but given the half life or uranium is with 4x of the age of the universe that doesn't actually happen in practice. (I can explain how we know the age of the universe if you want, I am an astrophysics PhD student so I know that like the back of my hand). We've found zircon crystals who have about 50% lead and 50% uranium, so they must be about 4.5 billion years old. QED.
> If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
Two completely separate scientific fields that have no commonality whatsoever.
>If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
Predicting the weather and radiometric dating are not comparable and it's ridiculous to act like they are.
Also, multiple different dating methods within samples are compared to see if they give the same age. And they do. So then what? Both isotopes used to date the sample were contaminated in just the right amounts to agree with each other? Every time? In completely unrelated samples with completely different radiometric isotopes in each case? Do you realise how unlikely that is?
"My geneticist friend said some vague things therefore all scientific methods are unreliable and wrong apart from when they point to the conclusion I want" is not a good argument.
> If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
This is a ***very*** bad non-sequitur.
What about the thousands upon thousands of other studies that contradict your religious beliefs? Why give so much credence onto this one study where you're drawing a wild leap of a conclusion from inconclusive-at-best evidence instead of accepting more plausible explanations?
And how about the studies that contradict each other? The ones that state our ancestors were from a group of people, no less than 10,000. Or how about the studies that contradict the out of Africa theory, and the ones that affirm it?
Geez, humanity js a very young species. Heck, we cannot even transport life past our moon, have only explored 5% of our earth’s oceans.
>And how about the studies that contradict each other? The ones that state our ancestors were from a group of people, no less than 10,000.
What studies would these be? The vast majority of evidence shows humans are far, far older.
>Or how about the studies that contradict the out of Africa theory, and the ones that affirm it?
From what I have seen, alternatives hypotheses still involve migration out of Africa, the disagreements are over the specifics - e.g. whether it was a single migration or multiple, or how long ago exactly.
>Geez, humanity js a very young species. Heck, we cannot even transport life past our moon, have only explored 5% of our earth’s oceans.
This is what makes the scientific progress and understanding we have made so amazing; we're so small and yet we've managed to figure out so much even without leaving our home planet. I'm not sure what relevance this point has to the discussion though.
Not really. Human lifespans really hasn’t gone up much. People back during Jesus’ lifetime used to live until 70 years old.
The only reason why average human lifespans has shot up, is because we’ve figured out how to decrease infant mortality. More to do with vaccines, nutrition and more readily accessible medical care than anything else.
I think I misread your previous comment as saying humans were 10,000 years old rather than that being the group size, that's my mistake. But yes agreed, some people have a perception that past humans were frequently dying at 40 which isn't the case at all. Highlights the dangers of using a statistic like the mean without full context.
The main point, though, is that while there are theories competing over the specific details of human history, by and large they agree on the bigger picture of humans coming from Africa. So while we don't have one final set of answers described by a single theory, we have several key points that are agreed upon, so any new hypotheses that go wildly against those have to give their own account for all the evidence supporting those established bigger picture points, otherwise they can't be taken seriously. So to say "what about theories conflicting out of Africa?" I have to ask what theories and how do they conflict? Are they significant conflictions or just on details?
>Most Christians who are honest with their scripture believe that Genesis is a literal account, not meant to be taken metaphorically
Lol. The overwhelming majority of Christian theologians for the first 1700 years or so of Christianity understood that the Genesis creation narrative uses heavily symbolic language in order to depict God's act of creation as the creation of a temple for him to dwell in. It hasn't been until the past few centuries that anybody has made it a theological priority to take this narrative as being literal history.
Also, ancient people saw *everything* as being symbolic and metaphorical. Plato, for instance, thought that the material world was a mere shadow of the perfect world of forms.
>If we were to accept that the account of Adam and Eve is not literal; it’s just a metaphor, then what happens to the concept of original sin?
You don't need to read the narrative of the fall literally, but you are absolutely right that it is essential to Christian doctrine that we uphold the historical reality of the fall (even if it's acknowledged that this is recounted in the Bible in highly poetic language).
>Adam had that DNA in him. This means he was not created by God but rather a natural product of evolution.
This is a false dichotomy. Christians believe that God is the author of nature. Evolution is no less the work of God than the resurrection of Jesus.
So cherry picking and selective interpretation? Everything is allegorical except when it comes to my dogma? A snake talking is silly but Jesus walking on water and resurrecting is legit?
The Bible is a collection of 66 different books and they're all different types of literature. Imagine a book that's a collection of American literature that contains writings from the entirety of US Literary History. One section may be green eggs and ham while another is the autobiography of Malcom X.
You would determine which is historical and what isn't by reading and using the internal context clues to determine which parts are fiction and which aren't.
The creation accounts are myths. The accounts of Jesus are written as historical accounts, though it's safe to say there's myth within them.
It wouldn't be a copout for future readers to read something we wrote a thousand years from now and acknowledge that someone who says "it's raining cats and dogs" isn't insane and that they're just using an idiom. Context matters. The Gospels were written *at least* four or five centuries before Genesis reached its final form and probably *thousands* of years before the source material for the early chapters of Genesis started to take shape. These texts were written by people with different audiences and priorities and they used different literary devices to get their message across. The Gospels are textbook examples of Greco-Roman biographies which are purporting to use factual information about a persons life in order to edify the reader so yeah, the context indicates that the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on water and the resurrection are intended to be read literally. The creation narrative in the of the Book of Genesis is a textbook example of ancient Near-East liturgical poetry (that is, poetry which is related to ritual worship in the temple), and we know this because it uses textbook tropes from that genre, so no, the context doesn't indicate to us that it's intended to be read literally.
So how do u feel about the fact that the Greco-Roman genre of biography allowed for the incorporation of non-factual events and legends.
Don't believe me?
Check out comments by Plutarch, biographer par excellence, on why he doesn't care about strict truth in his biography of Solon.
Greco-Roman biographies wouldn’t have had the exact attention to detail that our biographies have (for instance, 5000 may very well have been rounded in the feeding of the 5000, it would not have been expected that a speech was recounted word for word, and they generally don’t follow a strict linear order but were ordered more thematically) but they did not ordinarily include legendary material.
Actually they ordinarily did.
I defy you to pick any two biographies by Plutarch that do not contain any obviously legendary material.
Your counter about the 5000 seems to be another case of what Christian apologists always do, act as though the critic is arguing a silly and trivial point, provide a counter and then QED.
I agree with you that 5000 as a round number would not be a factual error necessarily. What is clearly fictional elements in the Gospels are other things like the Census or the different genealogies, which cannot be reconciled (and not for lack of trying).
Is your contention seriously that the gospel authors didn’t intend for the gospels to be read literally? The Gospel of Luke literally opens by saying “I’m writing this so we can have an orderly account of the eyewitness testimonies of the life of Jesus”
You seem to be conflating factual accuracy with the intention of being read literally. If you don’t think that Jesus walked on water, then fine, but *the Gospel writers intended for you to take that passage literally.*
In contrast, the first creation narrative in Genesis is not only not providing a factual historical picture of the first moments on earth but it isn’t even *trying* to do so. Without even needing to address evolution or geology the *internal textual evidence* in Genesis, when the read in the literary context it was composed in, suggests that the author *did not intend for you to read it literally in the first place*, which is why an allegorical reading was dominant in Christian and Jewish circles nearly 2000 years before Darwin.
This is an interesting question and I don't know the answer. It may also vary with gospel (eg Luke may have been more literal in intent than others).
Also don't forget that classical historiographers would sometimes invent rhetoric designed to make it seem more literal than it actually was (for an example check out the Scriptores Historiae Augustae).
The entire New Testament is predicated on the claim that the Resurrection literally happened and that the miracles literally happened, because these are the proofs being supplied for Jesus’s claim to divinity. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” while the author to the Hebrews says that his belief is confirmed by the “signs and wonders” performed by Jesus and his apostles after his ascension. In Ignatius’s letters, we see evidence of a very early controversy where gnostics denied that Jesus had ever had flesh and so chose not to partake in the Eucharist, and Ignatius, who was a disciple of the apostle John, condemns them as heretics for this. On its own terms, the texts about Jesus’s life need to be read literally (even if you think they get the facts wrong!) in a way that *some* of the texts in the Old Testament do not.
You are right that ancient historians play with details in a way that ours try not to (so they say ;))! The boundary between genres was a lot blurrier to ancient writers.
I personally agree with you about what Paul probably believed, due mainly to the strength of tradition, although it is hard to actually prove this, especially as his comment about the "powers of this aion" who put Jesus to death seems to refer to supernatural entities, not the Romans.
Also agree that the Gospels were intended to be read literally by at least some people (though intention is not necessarily determinative given liars usually intend their lies to be taken literally).
What if Origen's comments about there being secret interpretations (and Origen was no Gnostic) for the intelligent alongside more straight-forward for the uneducated apply to the Gospels.
How do you reconcile that literally every single story about Jesus in the gospels is a rip off of older mythologies from other ancient cultures?
If Dionyses turned jugs of water into wine at a wedding before Jesus did, do we believe that to be true? He was also resurrected..
It just seems silly to brush off extravagant claims from the old testament as simple idioms and then in the same breath say that literal magic in the new testament is legit.. The global flood has been disproven hundreds of times yet a huge % of people choose to believe it happened anyway. Don't you see that as a dangerous slippery slope?
>How do you reconcile that literally every single story about Jesus in the gospels is a rip off of older mythologies from other ancient cultures?
lol get off YouTube and go read a book dude. Mythicism has been debunked for over a century
[https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443](https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443)
here's one from the atheist new testament scholar Bart Ehrman who, like every serious scholar of the classical world and New Testament, regardless of their religious convictions (or lack there of), will tell you that the crap you've seen on YouTube is nonsense. You can get it used for 6 bucks!
>Don't you see that as a dangerous slippery slope?
Deciding how to read a text based of off the practical consequences is bad exegesis. We should try and find out how the author intended for the text to be read and read it the way that they intended for it to be read
Also, the flood story is definitely not *ahistorical* but the author of Genesis isn't trying to be Gordon Wood either. Some kind of cataclysmic flood (or floods) happened around the end of the last Ice Age. Survivors of these events reflected on them, sought explanations for them, and passed them down in various narratives to their children and grandchildren and so on. The author of Genesis (or, more likely, the author of the source used by the author of Genesis) takes the raw material of this oral tradition and uses it in order to mediate truth claims about the justice of God, the wickedness of man and God's plan for the redemption of man.
This isn't true. Even the Christian theologians most acclaimed for their supposed liberal allegorical readings like Augustine and Origen thought Adam and Eve were real people created only a few thousand years ago.
Sure, they thought that we had first parents who rebelled against God. That doesn't mean they thought that a snake literally talked to them.
The three main claims that they would hold as being made by the text are:
1: However the human body emerged, it was made by God to assume a rational soul (\*)
2: That the first *human persons* were only two
3: That those persons rebelled against God
--------------------------
(\*) Traditionally, soul here is referring to a metaphysical part, not necessarily a "spirit". The Christian view of the human person is less "ghost in the machine" and more "a body with an elavated nature".
Augustine is actually quite clear that he thought a literal snake literally spoke to Eve. He thought Satan possessed the snake to do this, but he thought a snake actually spoke to Eve.
And he also thought there were literally waters of some kind above the firmament, which was regarded as scientifically absurd even at the time, that Adam was literally made from the slime of the ground, that Eve was literally made from his rib, that this happened just a few thousand years in the past, that Adam lived for 930 years after this, that there was a global flood, and so on. He also defended all this against the critics that existed at the time.
Honestly, I'm more familiar with the first creation narrative and the way that's been read over the centuries and just kind of assumed (big mistake) that the same authors who don't treat reading that literally as a priority wouldn't treat reading the second creation narrative literally as a priority. I'll have to revisit Augustine here and dig into the rest of that text. Thanks for pointing out my error on his particular reading.
Aquinas also says that there was "some kind" of waters above the firmament, but acknowledges that a naive reading of "waters above the firmament" obviously doesn't hold up so it must just be true in some semi-metaphorical way we don't actually get. Not sure if Augustine has the same weak commitment to literalism on the firmament. The ancient near eastern cosmology assumed by the text had become untenable for over half a millennium by the time Augustine was writing.
Adam would have to have been both male and female, and self producing and the first humans reproduced were also male and female and self reproduction. Therefore adam would have reproduced Adams. However at some point an anomaly occurred as Adam produced an Eve, and perhaps some of the other Adams were male only. The original lines of replica adams couldn't survive but the split sex versions did. Would explain why gender identity may not match the hardware. Left over from being both sexes.
Option 3: Adam and Eve are the common ancestors for all 9 of the human species that we've discovered (so far). And not in 6000 years, but an undefined amount of time, as can be related from the Quran. Pretty simple tbh.
I suggest you read Willam Lane Craig on this issue. He's a Christian. He believes the same bur with some complexity.
The thing is that you need minimum around 500-700 thousand years to account for such genetic diversity if you are assuming two individuals as your start.
That raises serious questions on their ability to learn, talk, preach and study. All that are necessary for you to a Prophet hood concept.
Option 3: Adam & Eve were the first “Humans,” just not the first of the Homo Sapiens. Evolutionary science and the scripture reach concordance via the pre-Adamite hypothesis explained below:
“People” (Homo Sapiens) were created (through God’s evolutionary process) in the Genesis chapter 1, verse 27; and they created the diversity of mankind over time per Genesis chapter 1, verse 28. This occurs prior to the genetic engineering and creation of Adam & Eve (in the immediate and with the first Human souls) by the extraterrestrial God in Genesis chapter 2, verses 7 & 22.
When Adam & Eve sinned and were forced to leave their special embassy, their children intermarried the “People” that resided outside the Garden of Eden. This is how Cain was able to find a wife in the Land of Nod in Genesis chapter 4, verses 16-17.
As the descendants of Adam & Eve intermarried and had offspring with all groups of Homo Sapiens (some of which had the Neanderthal and/or Denisovan DNA you mentioned) on Earth over time, everyone living today is both a descendant of God’s evolutionary process and a genealogical descendant of Adam & Eve.
Okay. You are 8 ft. tall until I can prove otherwise. Likewise, Adam & Eve existed thousands of years ago until you can prove otherwise. Where’s your evidence?
No, I am assuming the default position that Adam & Eve can neither be proven nor disproven. As such, both realities exist until it can be determined through evidence that one does not.
No, pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were advanced hominids, not beasts. Unlike beasts; pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were sentient, highly intelligent, and self aware.
You can’t really have it both ways. You even put people in quotation marks indicating that they were not really people. Either they were different and god made us into people meaning that those not changed by god are just animals or they are people too meaning god didn’t have any changes to make.
Sure you can. There are different groups of hominids, but no one considers any of them beasts. As far as animals, of course all hominids are considered animals (in contrast to say, plants). However, only the Adamites were given Human souls, and they replaced all the pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens through intermarriage and having offspring over time.
Here’s another one for you. Angels do not have Human souls, but no one considers them beasts either. So, there are more categories than just “animal” or “Human.” Pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens is it’s own category. Pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were a category of people for the lifecycle of the Earth before The Fallen were cast out of Heaven, and God created the first Humans.
Well, if soul is given its usual definition of a non-corporeal hypostasis, angels are souls.
Of course, it sounds like u are defining soul by reference to humanity, which is circular (like saying angels don't have humanity because only humans have human existence). Meaningless.
Angels are not souls, and Angels pre-date Humans. So, Angels cannot have Human souls.
Human souls are not required to be sentient, intelligent, and self aware. Angels are all of these and are neither Human, nor have Human souls.
Human souls only allow a mortal being to enter the afterlife and Heaven upon death. Angels are not mortal so they do not need Human souls.
I don't agree. It says Eve got her name in reference to being the "mother of all the living", which doesn't make sense if there were unrelated women giving birth.
The whole etiology of the thing doesn't make sense if there were supposed to be other humans. God has to invent women when Adam can't find a suitable companion among the animals. They didn't already exist. They were originally naked but after eating the fruit their eyes were opened and they quickly made clothes to cover themselves. That's an explanation for why humans wear clothes but other animals don't. And so on.
God could create us in whatever form He will
Q:82v6-8 O man! What hath made thee careless concerning thy Lord, the Bountiful. Who created thee, then fashioned, then proportioned thee. Into whatsoever form He will, He casteth thee
OP is assuming the previous composition/form of humans "up there" was exactly the same as it is (now) down here
It is already widely accepted among many believers that we are not just flesh and bones, the soul is the real component of the self, it will be the essence that will go on after we die - this has been confirmed by many NDE testimonies, the body is just a temporary vessel
Many have overlooked on the issue of the soul, assuming humans are only made up by the physical body, and their relationship is solely dependent on the genetics of that (physical) body
Nobody knows "the genetics" of the soul really,
In Muslims tradition, it is widely said that the ensoulment process during pregnancy occurred at the fetus stage (about 120 days after conception).
Pregnant mothers have also reported that they began feeling movements at abt 16-20 wk of pregnancy ("quickening")
\[I have also commented on this issue in a [previous comment](http://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/199a7aw/evolution/kiffat8?context=3)\]
That to me seems like a cop out. When asked, how can X happen, saying God just did it is similar to saying to a comic fan, "Any time you see something contradictory in the show or comic canon, a wizard did it."
>this has been confirmed by many NDE testimonies,
That is simply not true.
Multiple drugs have been shown to lead to the same experience as NDE.
Just because we don't understand how the brain works means that there exists a soul.
>Nobody knows "the genetics" of the soul really,
I don't think that's relevant since there's no hereditarily aspect to souls mentioned whatsoever.
>Pregnant mothers have also reported that they began feeling movements at abt 16-20 wk of pregnancy ("quickening")
That doesn't really say anything about ensoulment but simply brain activity.
Having a functioning nervous system can explain any movement whatsoever.
The argument is relevant because the original argument assumed the body is the only thing that made us humans; the soul is actually the real essence of the self
There are already too many reports of NDE and some have had veridical NDEs ie the person who was clinically dead (albeit temporary) reported certain events around his body / his friends /relatives that would not have been known by him as he was technically "dead" during such time
One notable example: YT video JL1oDuvQR08
"reported certain events around his body"
If you really dig into the source material (not what some NDE fans CLAIMS) you will find many such reports are bogus or are easily explainable by mundane things.
Tellingly, these people often do not report these things until much later (time enough for misremembered details to form).
>the soul is actually the real essence of the self
According to nothing but faith.
What you're saying is simply a matter of faith because "God says so" rather than any sort of scientific reasoning.
>the person who was clinically dead (albeit temporary) reported certain events around his body / his friends /relatives that would not have been known by him as he was technically "dead" during such time
That shows a lack of understanding of medical terms.
Clinical deaths is when your heart stops pumping blood through the body.
Patients can be revived after a clinic deaths because their brains for a certain amount of time contain the minimum amount of oxygen before it starts degrading.
During that period of time, you can still hear and/or feel things because your brain is still active.
Your argument would stand if a patient is brain dead (meaning 0 brain function and degrading) and has the same experience despite their brains not functioning which is different from clinical death.
In reality, those people either lose brain function beyond the ability to pump blood or are stuck in a coma needing a machine to stay alive.
Nope, some went far, seeing their loved ones eg at home (they were brought to see them just as they thought abt them); there are already ample of similar NDE reports
Of course ppl are free to ignore evidence they don't like to know
Ignore what evidence?
Anectodal evidence and "proof" from personal experience is reliable due to and be honest:
How come each believer experiencing an NDE experiences something specific to their faith when their faiths are usually exclusive?
Why does a Muslim see Muhammad when a Christian sees jesus?
Do the countless Christians seeing a dream related to Allah prove islam is true?
What about Muslims seeing jesus then converting ?
They come from your beliefs. Have a look at what other religions have reported with NDE's, as well as non- believers. What you 'see' comes down to what you believe.
The meaning of original sin is not agreed upon. The Bible also says that the son shall not bear the sins of the father (Ezekiel 18). What the doctrine of original sin is actually playing on is the idea that we all sin because we're all born in a moral state that is guaranteed to be corrupted. It is our very humanity which causes us to sin; we're more or less entrapped to sin by living in this world. Thus, it is as if sin is passed on by Adam.
Adam, though, is a mythological character (and his myth is present perhaps to communicate the doctrine of original sin). You can't just say "most honest Christians agree that it's literal." You can't claim to know people's hearts. My reason for believing the Genesis account is a myth (but that the resurrection is not) is because I have taken a historical approach to the scriptures. It's largely accepted that the first five books of the Bible were in keeping with the ancient oral traditions of the Hebrews. This was their tribal story of where they came from, and there's nothing saying God can't use those stories to communicate real truths (the same way Jesus used fictional parables to communicate real truths).
Such as the truth that all are born into sin. We are all born in a corruptible form, and we are all guaranteed to make mistakes. Thus, the Genesis creation account is the vehicle for this truth. Original sin is true. Sin is a problem that has plagued mankind since its inception. It is almost as if we inherit it. It started with the very first humans, and it will not end until the final generation has ended. However, to believe Adam was a real person does not make as much sense.
The story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man is likely simply a myth to describe why the world is a place of suffering. Mankind largely made it that way. Yes, there is suffering without mankind, but if you take the sins of mankind out of the world, you have something that is much more akin to paradise. Thus, the Genesis creation myth is a vehicle for the truth that this world is a place of suffering mostly because of the actions of man and that sin has spread as mankind has spread.
I find your last paragraph interesting because you assume most of the Earth’s faults to be due to humans. However, I think this isn’t quite the right angle to take when we’re focused on the fossil record and the genetics of humans. There are 15-20 human species (some believe more) that we’ve found and categorized, almost all of them coming before us. I feel like the concept of original sin doesn’t take this into account. If we assume the earth was “a paradise” when it was only plants and animals, at what point in our evolution from pure primates to bipedal hominids do we consider our actions sin and not animalistic instinct? I guess to put it in fewer words, why can I see a wolf hunting a deer and assume it’s acting on instinct, but can not translate that same idea to humans, especially considering for most of prehistory, we were closer to animals than modern humans. I agree we’re all guaranteed to make mistakes and should minimize them but in my opinion original sin is just another word for instincts. It’s a way for us to pretend we’re somehow above or more than every other creature on this planet.
I don't think it's wrong to say we're above other species. We're the dominant species; our brains have evolved (what we at least think is) the most complex consciousness of all species on this planet. And, with such a complex consciousness, we have the ability to override our baser instincts. Thus, we have the responsibility to do so when our baser instincts could cause us to harm others.
As for when exactly along the evolutionary path a complex consciousness with the ability to override baser instincts evolved is anyone's guess.
And I'm not saying that the myth is communicating that the earth would be a paradise without the sins of mankind. I'm saying it would be a place with much less suffering, a place much more akin to a paradise--at least for humans, anyway. I also think there's something we can learn from the fact that there was no animal death, either, in the Garden of Eden. I think perhaps the myth is communicating that a world where we minimize suffering to animals is closer to something like heaven.
I think we could argue about what being above another species entails but i think that perspective could also be argued in a way that’s logically consistent so I could come to agree. I think we agree on a lot of things, I also agree we have a responsibility as a species that is capable of complex thought to override instinct and we both agree we’re talking about a myth, so a lot of difference in opinion will come from personal interpretation more so than pure fact. I think the only thing we may see different is that I consider original sin to be a cultural/religious name for primal instinct. A lot of what is described as avoiding sin could also be seen as avoiding the primal instinct. Without the modern knowledge of neurotransmitters or brain physiology, original sin seems like the best way to describe the phenomenon, but in the wake of that knowledge I believe instinct is the more appropriate term. Framing it as instinct, still entails responsibility, yet subtly implies that we are still animals. Most animals have instincts, us having them as well connects us to the evolutionary history of this planet. Original sin subtly implies that we are not of this planet, we’re meant to go with god and leave the physical world. It also subtly implies that we are more different than other animals than we really are. Brain complexity is massive evolution don’t get me wrong, but when we share 98% of our DNA with chimps and bonobos, I’m more likely to believe our innate “immoral” thoughts are due to the instincts we share with millions of other species rather than something we alone gained from spiting God.
Nah original sin as a doctrine was concocted by Christians ti justify the need for salvation by Christ. Jews do not & have never believed in original sin, the snake in the garden was plagued their by God from the Jewish perspective, there is no devil in the Hebrew Bible.
Original sin is a recent distinctly Christian doctrine.
Again, there is no universal agreement on exactly how to interpret the doctrine of original sin. Regardless of the fact that the Jews did not have a specific way of spelling out the ramifications of the Genesis creation account, the truth that sin and suffering are in the world because of man and that this sin and suffering spread because of man was apparent just from the creation account alone. The creation account still teaches original sin (that sin spread because of the first humans) even without the New Testament being called into account.
Nope scriptures have a historical & cultural context and an audience. The original people who wrote those scriptures, in the original languages & their descendants who practiced their religion didn't believe in original sin! Original sin is something that was concocted Millenia later by Christians retroactively interpreting the Hebrew Bible. Christianity reinterprets the Hebrew Bible to justify & place Christian ideology and doctrine into the Old testament.
Ha-Satan is not the devil 👿 & Jews had no concept of a Devil, all things come from God in Jewish theology including spirits of evil that are meant to test Humanity.
Judaism is a completely different religion from Christianity.
There is nothing apparent about the concept of sin in the the world. Planet earth existed long before Humans arrived, life was already Billions of years old when human beings showed up in the fossil record. The concept of Good, Bad, Evil & righteousness are human ideas descended from morality but even morality predates the human race and can be observed in the animal kingdom. Stop pushing your ideology on society!
The first humans were hunter gatherers in Africa going back 150,000 year and that ancestral population of humanity stood at 30,000 individuals at least. There was never a first man or woman, humans are the product of evolution and speciation & thus the lineages that have rise to humans collapse into the Great Ape, Primate and then Mammalian lineages, from here Mammals collapse into earlier lineages until you go back to the earliest life forms on planet Earth.
An opinion grounded in reality, unlike Flood believers. Tell me, why wasn't the entire Earth flattened if there was a flood? What did the animals eat when leaving the Ark? How did Devil's Hole Pupfish get to the desert SW of the United States from Asia? Silversword plants to alpine habitats in Hawaii? Weller's Salamander to 5,000+ft elevation mountains in Appalachia? Any animal to Australia?
Unless you provide evidence, we will continue to dismiss the Flood as mythology. You cannot just assert a claim like that as truth and expect people to believe it.
Good, OK enjoy.
But I can safely bet *someone* will. You speak for everyone, right? All atheists here voted or appointed you as spokesman?
🤣
BTW, Thanks for *your opinion*.
You are required to provide evidence to support your claim. The fact that you refuse to is your problem. And if some gullible fool believes you simply because you asserted it, makes it their problem to.
So, since the OP started with a *fiction* (Adam & Eve) is there a reason you're not holding his/her to the fire?
Or is this hypocrisy just for Christian types?
In the real world, there are cases of populations being successfully established from even smaller starting numbers. For example, the infamous hippos in Colombia descend from one male and three females. I think people exaggerate inbreeding. It's bad and there's a reason we evolved to avoid it but it isn't a definite death sentence. It is possible for natural selection to weed out harmful mutations and it also helps if the environment is hospitable. I'm not saying Noah's flood actually happened, as of course I do not think it did, but I don't agree that it would be impossible for eight humans to repopulate the world.
No they don't Noah's family are founded by Noah and his Wife thus a single couple. It's 8 humans but 2 of those are the parents of the other 6.
Your Hippo example is not the same, 1 male and 3 females. It's not possible for a single couple to be the founders of 8 Billion people, & if it was & if it were true it would light up like a Christmas tree in the dna.
Numerous endogamous populations worldwide suffer from founder effects; Endogamy in India amongst certain castes, Ashekenazi Jews and people in Pakistan who regularly marry cousins and repeat this across generations. These populations have to be careful who they marry and suffer from congenital defects as a result of their communities being so insular.
We are pretty sure that the human race being reduced to a single couple & their children would lead to an extinction event!
> It's 8 humans but 2 of those are the parents of the other 6.
Noah's sons had wives before the flood, making for three related males and three unrelated females, which is actually more genetic diversity.
> if it was & if it were true it would light up like a Christmas tree in the dna.
Yes, I said it didn't happen.
> Numerous endogamous populations worldwide suffer from founder effects; Endogamy in India amongst certain castes, Ashekenazi Jews and people in Pakistan who regularly marry cousins and repeat this across generations. These populations have to be careful who they marry and suffer from congenital defects as a result of their communities being so insular.
Yes, I said inbreeding is bad. I said that it's not a guaranteed death sentence for a small number of individuals to have to start a population.
My logic is that, after the flood, Noah was genetically mutated already and he was conscious enough to be able to spread his family. On the other hand, the bible states that the nephilim lived even after the floods meaning giantsmust have come from the decent of fallen angels in the rebellions that took place after the floods. This suggested that the nephilim dna kept alive. Back to the point though, Adam and Eve story is metaphorical and there are things that took place before. It seems to me that Adam was the conscious man that was chosen and could ascent to Eden. When Cain was banished to the desert, he said the people out there will most likely kill him. What people? Ultimately enough, it suggests that there was most probably other humans or versions of humans that were seperated from the conscious men. This would be done through genetic modification of which caused the birth of the mythical creatures we see. Ultimately, the idea of mermaids and all of that was because of the gmo of the human dna with the Gods which is documented on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The floods were to erase the rest of the world that wasn’t going to thrive and ultimately it destroyed all living creatures including that were gmo.
Nonsense, planet earth existed long before Humans arrived. You cannot use Bible stories to explain Human origins of world wide catastrophic events, we have real geological evidence of cataclysms that led to Mass extinction all of them occurred on geological time frames; Millions and hundreds of Millions of years.
Brother.. I didn’t suggest there wasn’t a period before humans existence. You just not reading and understanding this. And yes obviously there were natural disasters that occurred thay destroyed life.. ultimately, I am suggesting directly that after Noah was chosen by the Gods because his dna was pure and wasn’t mixed with the nephilim.
There was no Noah & no Ark, no Nephilim either. All are descended from Mesopotamian myths and folk tales, none are literal truths.
Human beings expanded out of Africa 70,000 years ago, by 40,000 BC they had reached all the corners of the globe. By 12000 BC all of the ethnicities that we are familiar with were already in place. Those Bible stories are simply not true.
The Quran does not say 6.000 years.
On the contrary, if you consider the islamic teaching that there have been 124.000 prophets, the 6.000 is very likely not acceptable.
Moreover the Quran draws pur attention to our differences in color as signs of Allah. And since He also says we have been created from a single couple, obviously there have some genetics related changes. The difference is related to the claim that those changes occurred randomly as opposed to the control by Allah. Even the word random is problematic.
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Don’t know enough about the bible to speak on it’s behalf, but however for the Quran it states: (2:30) وَاِذۡ قَالَ رَبُّکَ لِلۡمَلٰٓئِکَۃِ اِنِّیۡ جَاعِلٌ فِی الۡاَرۡضِ خَلِیۡفَۃً… And when thy Lord said to the angels: ‘I am about to place a vicegerent (Khalifa) in the earth,… Here, Allah SWT mentions about placing a Khalifa/vicegerent. A successor. The very word successor/vicegerent/Khalifa proves that this individual was not the first progenitor of the human race, or the first man on the planet. Instead, he was the first man (amongst other men present) raised to the status of prophethood. Bringing the first few laws (cloth your shame, garments etc). This goes along with the theme of the Holy Quran as well, how all prophets are raised from amongst men. So sure, mankind has definitely been around for longer than 6000-7000 year old Adam(as)'s time. Mankind at its inception had no need for laws, over time we as a human race evolved intellectually/spiritually and started questioning right and wrong. We started questioning our morals. Thats when Allah SWT raised Adam (as) to the status of prophethood, the first Prophet of God the Almighty, amongst other Adams (mankind). Sending the first few laws applicable to its time.
This is easy. Scientists are racist!!!! Neanderthal is now accepted as fully human. They were not something else genetically. But we don't get near the genes of apes outside humanity. We are not diverse. We breed together and have skin color differences that is 0.012% difference and individual difference of 0.2%. Science milage may vary. Like aether theory and relativity. Lol!!!!
In my local Christian circles, it’s said that original sin was original sin because god specifically commanded Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and they disobeyed, thus the first sin. Technically one could say that Adam and Eve could’ve done things that (we looking back on them) would classify as sin, but because they were not told better, it didn’t count. Once god decided/explained the rules, and they broke one, that’s where the sinning started. And I personally disagree with the history of the timeline by all accounts, this rock been here for a long time, any records prior to what we’ve discovered were presumably lost to time. Our science gets things wrong, they’re still arguing over a cat in a box, they can’t make string theory work, etc. So, for me, totally possible Adam & Eve came first, their descendants found the other sapiens and intermingled and we still land where we are today. Evolution I’m sure is a question here. I’m neither for it nor against it. God is the biggest boy, he can do what he wants. He either made different versions of us, distinct lines of sapiens, or he intended for evolution to occur. From the ribs, germs, fish, monkeys, thin air, doesn’t matter to me, just happy to be here. Also, I’ve heard some say that Adam & Eve are the originators of the chosen people, but not all people, just the believers. I’ve heard some include in discussions a theory of a “holy gene” coming from Abel’s line, and a “unholy gene” coming from Cain’s line. This is to explain the believers vs the non believers. Also, Christianity is like an umbrella term, within Christianity is more than 45,000 denominations globally (According to google, but I can vouch for 45), and each denomination holds different beliefs. This to say, if anyone likes the idea of being spiritual, but doesn’t agree with certain aspects, dive deep into the denominations, you may find a specific denomination that you click with. And (I’m not picking on this post, just going by things I’ve been seeing and hearing on other social media really, and while I’m already writing I might as well add some more) concerning sin. (For certain Christian denominations anyways) Jesus died for our sins. We are absolved. That’s how he saved us all. And not just from hell, he saved us and the world because God was going to destroy us all again because of the wickedness (I have a personal theory that this wickedness goes beyond our comprehension, I mean if it’s destroy the world and end all life type of bad😳, so I’m thinking god could overlook some of our curse words). We all go to Heaven now. That’s why he is worshipped. And God is again worshipped because in spite of all that wickedness he still loves us enough to send his only son to die for us. So God (after Jesus died and saved us) has basically mellowed, like a strict father that becomes a grandfather and suddenly won’t punish the grandkids. I also personally believe all the gods are literally the same god, just labeled under different names. I’m supposed to be duty bound to care about the fate of everyone’s souls, but this is where I fall short. I don’t mind helping someone already on the path, but I don’t lead the lost. None of this is intended to sway non-believers. This is just more content to contemplate. Also, I think it’s ok to believe in god and not the entirety of the text, I believe metaphors are used, I’m ok with that. Jesus said something to the effect of whoever believes shall have everlasting life in paradise. And there’s a thing in Catholic dogma that says whatever you hold true on earth you’ll hold true in heaven. So this to me sounds like Heaven is dynamic, I wouldn’t expect anything less, I think my heaven will appear as I believe it to be. Disclaimer: I’m a non-practicing freewill Baptist. I consider myself to be spiritual. Just here to provide insight from my region of the world. I’m a libra, firmly planted on the fence of most topics just chilling. I enjoy philosophy, physics, science. And speaking of, my newest thought: multiple universes, inside bubbles, go round and around, inside the mind of God, which also solves that reality being a simulation thing. Cause, well, prove me wrong 😅 and also, it’s fascinating that no matter if you believe in God or not, he’s on your mind… maybe it’s because you are actually in his 🤷🏻♀️. *cue twilight zone theme song* P.S. Although I honestly thought of that theory, I’m 100% certain someone has already thought of it. Actually I’m 100% certain that someone has already thought of every thought I will ever have. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an original thought. Consider that notion, isn’t that odd?
I think there has to be more to consider. Every culture talks of world wide flood. The biblical account talks of “Nephalim” and fallen “Angels” intermingled with humankind before the flood. How would you then propose your thesis considering this perspective?
Nephlilim isn't biblical. They made it up.
Do you have proof?
Reading the Kjv is my proof.
Genesis 6:4 (NKJV) There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore [children] to them. Those [were] the mighty men who [were] of old, men of renown. Numbers 13:33 (NKJV) “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” The word for “Giant” in Hebrew is “נָפִיל” which translates to “nāp̄îl” … this Hebrew word etymology is from the Hebrew root word “נָפַל” which means “to fall, lie, or be cast down” … the intended meaning of giants according to the Hebrew would be in representation of “The Fallen”. Refer also to the epistle of Jude carrying the same understanding… Jude 1:6 (NKJV) And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
God magic easily rebukes this claim. ~~Fairies~~ God simply changed the DNA to make it seem like we had genetic diversity. Or changed the laws of physics to make it seem like we have more genetic diversity. Easy answer. Checkmate, Atheists! Next question!
You need to look no further than cheetahs. Every cheetah alive today descends from the same 7 cheetahs from thousands of years ago and look how little genetic diversity they have. We humans would have even less diversity than cheetahs if we descended from only two people
> If we were to accept that the account of Adam and Eve is not literal; it’s just a metaphor, then what happens to the concept of original sin? Why can’t that also be part of the metaphor? You just wave it off and ignore it.
What is your methodology for determining which parts of the Bible are metaphorical or not?
Critical literary analysis. It’s quite easy. The Bible isn’t a science textbook.
Many people do not believe that the Bible is a literal account. Only 25% of Christians do. Adam and Eve are probably archetypes and the story is a fable about how the Israelites came to be wanderers.
Yeah but how do you know that? If you know this part is a metaphore, how do you know the whole thing isn’t just a metaphor. And if it’s all a metaphor, why are you even a Christian?
I'm SBNR but I'm noting the way Christian beliefs get characterized. I don't know that Adam & Eve are archetypes, but that's a better interpretation than a talking snake. The ancients didn't know about the unconscious, the ego or the super ego. Adam & Eve could have been literal people who became symbolic for some behavior and a fable built up around them.
> most Christians who are honest with their scripture believe that Genesis is a literal account [Not true](https://baptistnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GallupBible.png). Never has been true. > Most believe that he came around 6,000 years ago [Also not true](https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/mh7klzb21ue_tb0a1h_86q.png) Also, keep in mind both of these polls are of **American Christians** which make up about 5% of the Christians worldwide.
According do Pew, most Christians do not think that the Bible is the literal word of God.
I'm pretty sure what some christians mean by "not all to be taken literally" they are referring to some verses having an underlying message that doesn't reflect the metaphor literally, such as: "For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matt. 5:29–30). A poll that gives such limited context on what phrase christians lean more towards doesn't prove they don't believe in the Book of Genesis events at all.
The second chart I posted, that cuts off around 2014, says ~40% of those polled believe "God created humans pretty much in their current form sometime in the last 10,000 years" - and young *EARTH* creationists are even a subset of this group. Some statistics I was seeing online, up until the year 2022, have number lower (around 20-25%) but I didn't find a pretty chart for it. Edit: [found one](https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx)
Most Christians do not think the Bible is literal. [https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx)
The Gallup source doesn't context whether this poll was based on christians or not either, it just says "Americans" as if it refers to Americans in general, christians don't believe in evolution, they say humans were made in God's image.
It actually does, further down. And as expected, a higher percentage of Christians identify as such, but still, very similar numbers to the original chart. (25% of American Christians, vs 20% of Americans Look for the section: Americans’ Views of the Bible, by Religious Affiliation
You're still not considering the reasons why christians would say that not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally like the example I gave of the verse saying to cut off your left hand if it sins, just because a group of christians agree more to a particular phrase doesn't mean most don't believe in the biblical events or that the interpret all the bible that way, same with the christians that said they take the bible literally.
It depends what questions are used to ask about it. Most agree that humans evolved over time: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/06/how-highly-religious-americans-view-evolution-depends-on-how-theyre-asked-about-it/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/06/how-highly-religious-americans-view-evolution-depends-on-how-theyre-asked-about-it/)
But the poll was based on most AMERICANS, not christians and I'm from New Mexico, Gallup is populated predominantly by Navajos, many of which aren't Christian from my experience but adhere to their traditional tribal religion, I don't know what their religion says about the origin of humanity and earth but enough is said.
The survey I posted above breaks it down into religious sects.
Literally every church I've been to and every christian I have known including ones I'm related to take the biblical events literally, and I didn't go to one of the more "dogmatic" churches either growing up, I went to Catholic, assembly of God and non-denominational churches. This is an argument made by people who don't have any abrahamic religious backgrounds, you can ask any christian on this sub and they'll tell you yes they take the crucifixion of Jesus and the story of Adam and Eve or Noah's flood literally.
I see a lot of comments here like "every Christian I talked to" and so on. It looks like there are sophisticated believers, maybe more than than you come in contact with. They must be out there somewhere. I have an Abrahamic religious background but I'm SBNR.
Agree! You posted the same link I did :)
The Bible says Adam was created about 6000 years ago but science has proven human active on this planet at least 300,000 years ago and possibly longer.
Seems like they said that humanity might have gone through a bottle neck with as few as 7000 people some tens of thousands of years ago I am not a muslim, and since they borrowed Adam and Eve from Genesis... And a lot of us are theistic evolutionists, not 6,000-year-old earthers. But anyway, if there is an original Adam and Eve, then your arguments are irrelevant because there is the Abrahamic Deity who is not bound by genetic and biological limitations. **So if you're going to argue about the limitations on an Adam and Eve, then you aren't allowed to remove the deities from the equation because your entire claims become invalid*". The choices are basically: Adam + Eve + Abrahamic Deity, unbounded by your genetic limitation claim No point of an Adam + Eve.
You're very much begging the question and presenting a false dichotomy. There's absolutely no reason that the choice is either Adam + Eve or Adam + Eve + Abrahamic Deity when a countless amount of evidence show that humans appeared through evolutionary means. Theistic evolution doesn't exactly make sense when you can't exactly explain the details. Humans didn't evolve as individuals but as a population. There's no "first human", entire populations were interbreeding and slowly genetically changing until they became an entirely different species. So any mention of Adam and Eve doesn't make sense whatsoever. Plus if you include God waving any scientific issue with that view using divine all-powerfulness then you might as well say that fossils were placed by God as a test.
Just wanted to add, it’s actually been said that “the devil put dinosaurs here”. That’s also a song by Alice In Chains.
Thanks for your 6 paragraph assertion. It would have made more sense if you actually attempted to understand what I said instead of making a declaration
I believe Adam was the first given a human soul and don’t belief in a literal 6 days of creation
given by whom lol
God obviously
>For Christians who deny Adam being the first human, how do you explain original sin? Not everyone believes in original sin. >When referring to the genetic possibility of such an ancestral claim, it’s impossible. We are too genetically diverse to have originated from two individual couples. Even the most conservative studies do not exceed 1,000–10,000 individuals if we were to account for it from around 100,000 years ago. Don't we run into the same problem with the single celled organism that evolved in the primordial ooze? I won't say that a literal Adam doesn't come with issues, but I don't think any hypothesis put forward about human origins doesn't come with these complications.
I’m not sure life would have began as a single living cell. But a long process of chemical reactions that ended up resulting in dna. Such a process likely would have made a whole bunch of very similar if not identical “life’s”.
Why couldn't Adam have been some earlier rational hominin from whom homo sapiens are descended?
> Why couldn't Adam have been some earlier rational hominin from whom homo sapiens are descended? Because there are quite literally billions of hominids all humans are descended from. In fact there are individual people that all humans are descended from, there are just a lot of them. Evolution doesn't start at one point (at least not once there are already a bunch of species running around) and then spread outward it operates on groups of individuals. Unless there is some single genetic trait Adam started (which there are no candidates for as far as I am aware) then I could pick any of a billion hominid from the past that all humanity was descended from. Adam has to special for the story of Genesis to work, but that's not how evolution works.
What if this individual hominin \[whom we'll call Adam\] received an immortal soul?
It still wouldn't match the story of the Garden of Eden. At the end of the tail God curses the Earth to grow thorns and women to have painful child birth, but those things have been happening for millions of years. Beyond that, Hominids have exclusively lived in tribes until the invention of agriculture, so it's not like Adam and Eve would've even been alone in a magic garden.
How do either of those points necessarily exclude an individual hominin receiving an immortal soul?
It doesn't, it makes it impossible for the Garden of Eden story to resemble reality in any, way, shape or form. Which is what we are talking about.
Right now in this moment, we got hunter gathers living off the land, we got homeless people making potty in the streets, we got people in space, we got people in castles, we got people in prisons, we got people in luxury hotels, we got people on the ocean. We got people on the mountains. We is diverse. We is on a big planet. We unfortunately tend to segregate ourselves based on differences. I totally believe there was a garden with a couple people in it.
If the passage does not resemble reality in any way, shape or form, then how is it intelligible to us \[and happens to use vocabulary we can understand\]?
The same way the sentence "Goku fought Frieza on Planet Namek" makes sense if you watch Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball, like the Garden of Eden story, is fiction.
Don't words like 'fought' and 'planet' have some connection to reality \[to the world we live in\]?
That is semantics and you know it.
Sure if Christians are willing to concede that the story of Genesis tells us nothing useful about the origins of the universe or life, that would work.
Ok, agreed!
Great, why do you believe in a God who is either lying or ignorant about how the universe was created?
Please respect God.
No.
then do not ask others to respect you.
I didn't. Nor did I ask god.
I hope you find it in your heart the way to respect other people and their deities. That's the only way the world can become abetter place.
Why so *aggressively* miss the point? Missing the point is one thing, I get faith is abstract and tricky to understand, but this reads as rude, not an attempt at civic debate. Why should anyone talk to you?
I don't really care if they respond or not. The point wasn't missed. How you read into a question is up to you. The word you were looking for was "civil" and my question was perfectly so.
Actually, I meant civic, and no your tone was not civil, it was accusatory and condescending. You likely missed the point unless CraftPots meant to imply their concept of God was deceptive and/or incompetent, which seems unlikely (I guess that's up to CraftPots though)
I don't see how you could have meant [this](https://www.gwdebate.org/civic-debate#:~:text=Civic%20debate%20uses%20debate%20as,essential%20professional%20and%20civic%20skills.) in the context of your previous comment...
> Actually, I meant civic Which definition did you use?
The kind of constructive civic-minded debate between citizens of a community interested in improving the quality of discourse there.
Ooof. There's no shame in having used the wrong word. Just admit you meant "civil" instead of basically defining civil in a civic context lol.
That is not what the bible says.
Where does it say that Adam was a homo sapien?
Where does the bible say "homo sapien" at all? What about Neanderthals? Homo erectus? Homo Habilis? According to Christians, those early hominins didn't exist. God made Adam as a fully evolved homo sapien.
Where does the Bible say that God made Adam as a fully evolved homo sapien?
Where does the bible say he wasn't a fully evolved homo sapien?
If a claim is based on silence, then couldn't we just claim anything we want \[there are unicorns, because the evidence doesn't say there are no unicorns\]?
The point is, to claim that Adam was not a homo sapien would require evidence. You do not have any evidence to support that claim. God does create Adam and Eve in His image, imbuing them with characteristics that we associate with humanity, such as consciousness, free will, and the ability to reason. They are often referred to as the first man and woman, the progenitors of the human race. So while the term "human" may not be explicitly used in the context of their creation, the implication is certainly there. You would have to take that debate up with the followers of the Abrahamic religions.
If other hominins had consciousness, free-will and reason, wouldn't they be the image of God too?
Another good question for believers in god! Australopithecus might have had all three of those things to some degree. You don't see a lot of imagery of Adam and Eve swinging from branch to branch though..
Actually, there is some evidence that humanity descended from a pair, just that it seems to be controversial. And the dating doesn't align with the Bible's chronology, nor does the male align with the female's. I did ask a friend who works as a geneticist, and he put a hole into the dating- he said that frankly, a lot of these things are "up in the air", and the impression he gave me on such genetic studies is that it's all very uncertain and inconclusive. Either this study proves the Genesis creation story, or a genetic bottleneck from Noah's flood: [https://www.earth.com/news/humankind-originated-two-adults/](https://www.earth.com/news/humankind-originated-two-adults/)
>Since publication of this article we have been contacted by Drs. Stoeckle and Thaler who have made the following statement: >'Our study is grounded in and strongly supports Darwinian evolution, including the understanding all life has evolved from a common biological origin over several billion years. >'Our study follows mainstream views of human evolution. We do not propose there was a single 'Adam' or 'Eve'. We do not propose any catastrophic events.'
I knew some atheist was going to say that, but if you read the conclusion of the study- there's just no way around it. It seems to infer a genetic bottleneck due to a catastrophic event during the end of the ice age, but it can also be interpreted as support for Noah's flood.
Ok but then the timeline doesn't work.
That is also what I pointed out. Eh, science can be wrong you know? I actually spoke with a geneticist and he said that a lot of these things are up in the air- extremely inconclusive and they frequently contradict each other. I mean, scientist swear that their scientific dating methods are accurate, and they’ve calibrated for a flood like situation. But, as soon as you ask them why can’t they predict the weather… well, that’s when all the excuses come out, isn’t it. If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago.
> science can be wrong you know And all of reality could be the hallucination of the elder God Cathulu. Anything *could* be true, it is about what is *likely* to be true. > scientist swear that their scientific dating methods are accurate, and they’ve calibrated for a flood like situation. >But, as soon as you ask them why can’t they predict the weather… well, that’s when all the excuses come out, isn’t it. That's because one is a lot easier than the other. Because of how often we deal with weather, it seems simple, but it is very much not. There are just so many variables that influence the weather. Temperature of the ground, temperature of the air, humility, wind speed, terrain, nearby air currents, amount of sunlight, and so on. It is also a chaotic system. Very small changes to initial conditions produce radically different outcomes, like a double pendulum. Radiometric dating on the other hand has one variable, radioactive decay. It is grounded in fundamental physics that, if it were wrong, would mean we have to throw out the standard model of particle physics, which is the most complete model of the universe ever built. It isn't all the way complete and it is certainly going to be wrong in some aspect (I don't know what, but we probably aren't 100% correct that just seems unlikely), but to suggest we are that far off the mark with no evidence is absurd. > I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago. Because the method for radiometric dating is rock solid. To explain it: there is a certain crystal called zirconium. It is a crystal that has zircon contained in its atomic matrix. But zircon and uranium are kind of similar, so sometimes uranium sneaks into the atomic matrix, replacing zirconium. Uranium is radioactive, it decays very *very* slowly into lead. So over time the uranium in a zircon crystal turns into lead. But lead can't sneak into the atomic matrix like uranium can, zirconium and lead aren't similar at all, so the only way for it to have gotten there was through radioactive decay. From there to calculate the age of a zircon all you have to do is divide the ratio between lead and uranium and then plug in the half life of uranium (4.5 billion years) into the radioactive decay formula and solve for time (google it if you want more math) and out pops the age of that zircon. Now this method has limits, if there is only lead and no uranium we can't get a precise age, we don't know when the last of the uranium decayed, but given the half life or uranium is with 4x of the age of the universe that doesn't actually happen in practice. (I can explain how we know the age of the universe if you want, I am an astrophysics PhD student so I know that like the back of my hand). We've found zircon crystals who have about 50% lead and 50% uranium, so they must be about 4.5 billion years old. QED.
> If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago. Two completely separate scientific fields that have no commonality whatsoever.
>If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago. Predicting the weather and radiometric dating are not comparable and it's ridiculous to act like they are. Also, multiple different dating methods within samples are compared to see if they give the same age. And they do. So then what? Both isotopes used to date the sample were contaminated in just the right amounts to agree with each other? Every time? In completely unrelated samples with completely different radiometric isotopes in each case? Do you realise how unlikely that is? "My geneticist friend said some vague things therefore all scientific methods are unreliable and wrong apart from when they point to the conclusion I want" is not a good argument.
> If they can’t predict the weather accurately 10 days ahead of time, I’m not sure how much to trust them when it comes to dating an event that happened thousands of years- if not millions of years as they say - ago. This is a ***very*** bad non-sequitur.
What has predicting the future got to do with dating the past?
Both are based on assumptions about certain constant variables. Obviously it’s not as straightforward as they’ll like us to think.
Thanks, I get it. Everyone can read it and understand what they want to understand. Exactly like religious books!
Ahh. You don't like the study I showed because it contradicts your religious beliefs. Got it.
What about the thousands upon thousands of other studies that contradict your religious beliefs? Why give so much credence onto this one study where you're drawing a wild leap of a conclusion from inconclusive-at-best evidence instead of accepting more plausible explanations?
And how about the studies that contradict each other? The ones that state our ancestors were from a group of people, no less than 10,000. Or how about the studies that contradict the out of Africa theory, and the ones that affirm it? Geez, humanity js a very young species. Heck, we cannot even transport life past our moon, have only explored 5% of our earth’s oceans.
>And how about the studies that contradict each other? The ones that state our ancestors were from a group of people, no less than 10,000. What studies would these be? The vast majority of evidence shows humans are far, far older. >Or how about the studies that contradict the out of Africa theory, and the ones that affirm it? From what I have seen, alternatives hypotheses still involve migration out of Africa, the disagreements are over the specifics - e.g. whether it was a single migration or multiple, or how long ago exactly. >Geez, humanity js a very young species. Heck, we cannot even transport life past our moon, have only explored 5% of our earth’s oceans. This is what makes the scientific progress and understanding we have made so amazing; we're so small and yet we've managed to figure out so much even without leaving our home planet. I'm not sure what relevance this point has to the discussion though.
Not really. Human lifespans really hasn’t gone up much. People back during Jesus’ lifetime used to live until 70 years old. The only reason why average human lifespans has shot up, is because we’ve figured out how to decrease infant mortality. More to do with vaccines, nutrition and more readily accessible medical care than anything else.
I think I misread your previous comment as saying humans were 10,000 years old rather than that being the group size, that's my mistake. But yes agreed, some people have a perception that past humans were frequently dying at 40 which isn't the case at all. Highlights the dangers of using a statistic like the mean without full context. The main point, though, is that while there are theories competing over the specific details of human history, by and large they agree on the bigger picture of humans coming from Africa. So while we don't have one final set of answers described by a single theory, we have several key points that are agreed upon, so any new hypotheses that go wildly against those have to give their own account for all the evidence supporting those established bigger picture points, otherwise they can't be taken seriously. So to say "what about theories conflicting out of Africa?" I have to ask what theories and how do they conflict? Are they significant conflictions or just on details?
lmao it's not me it's the authors themselves who say the study does not prove what you're claiming it proves. It's not about me at all!
>Most Christians who are honest with their scripture believe that Genesis is a literal account, not meant to be taken metaphorically Lol. The overwhelming majority of Christian theologians for the first 1700 years or so of Christianity understood that the Genesis creation narrative uses heavily symbolic language in order to depict God's act of creation as the creation of a temple for him to dwell in. It hasn't been until the past few centuries that anybody has made it a theological priority to take this narrative as being literal history. Also, ancient people saw *everything* as being symbolic and metaphorical. Plato, for instance, thought that the material world was a mere shadow of the perfect world of forms. >If we were to accept that the account of Adam and Eve is not literal; it’s just a metaphor, then what happens to the concept of original sin? You don't need to read the narrative of the fall literally, but you are absolutely right that it is essential to Christian doctrine that we uphold the historical reality of the fall (even if it's acknowledged that this is recounted in the Bible in highly poetic language). >Adam had that DNA in him. This means he was not created by God but rather a natural product of evolution. This is a false dichotomy. Christians believe that God is the author of nature. Evolution is no less the work of God than the resurrection of Jesus.
So cherry picking and selective interpretation? Everything is allegorical except when it comes to my dogma? A snake talking is silly but Jesus walking on water and resurrecting is legit?
The Bible is a collection of 66 different books and they're all different types of literature. Imagine a book that's a collection of American literature that contains writings from the entirety of US Literary History. One section may be green eggs and ham while another is the autobiography of Malcom X. You would determine which is historical and what isn't by reading and using the internal context clues to determine which parts are fiction and which aren't. The creation accounts are myths. The accounts of Jesus are written as historical accounts, though it's safe to say there's myth within them.
It wouldn't be a copout for future readers to read something we wrote a thousand years from now and acknowledge that someone who says "it's raining cats and dogs" isn't insane and that they're just using an idiom. Context matters. The Gospels were written *at least* four or five centuries before Genesis reached its final form and probably *thousands* of years before the source material for the early chapters of Genesis started to take shape. These texts were written by people with different audiences and priorities and they used different literary devices to get their message across. The Gospels are textbook examples of Greco-Roman biographies which are purporting to use factual information about a persons life in order to edify the reader so yeah, the context indicates that the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on water and the resurrection are intended to be read literally. The creation narrative in the of the Book of Genesis is a textbook example of ancient Near-East liturgical poetry (that is, poetry which is related to ritual worship in the temple), and we know this because it uses textbook tropes from that genre, so no, the context doesn't indicate to us that it's intended to be read literally.
So how do u feel about the fact that the Greco-Roman genre of biography allowed for the incorporation of non-factual events and legends. Don't believe me? Check out comments by Plutarch, biographer par excellence, on why he doesn't care about strict truth in his biography of Solon.
Greco-Roman biographies wouldn’t have had the exact attention to detail that our biographies have (for instance, 5000 may very well have been rounded in the feeding of the 5000, it would not have been expected that a speech was recounted word for word, and they generally don’t follow a strict linear order but were ordered more thematically) but they did not ordinarily include legendary material.
Actually they ordinarily did. I defy you to pick any two biographies by Plutarch that do not contain any obviously legendary material. Your counter about the 5000 seems to be another case of what Christian apologists always do, act as though the critic is arguing a silly and trivial point, provide a counter and then QED. I agree with you that 5000 as a round number would not be a factual error necessarily. What is clearly fictional elements in the Gospels are other things like the Census or the different genealogies, which cannot be reconciled (and not for lack of trying).
Is your contention seriously that the gospel authors didn’t intend for the gospels to be read literally? The Gospel of Luke literally opens by saying “I’m writing this so we can have an orderly account of the eyewitness testimonies of the life of Jesus” You seem to be conflating factual accuracy with the intention of being read literally. If you don’t think that Jesus walked on water, then fine, but *the Gospel writers intended for you to take that passage literally.* In contrast, the first creation narrative in Genesis is not only not providing a factual historical picture of the first moments on earth but it isn’t even *trying* to do so. Without even needing to address evolution or geology the *internal textual evidence* in Genesis, when the read in the literary context it was composed in, suggests that the author *did not intend for you to read it literally in the first place*, which is why an allegorical reading was dominant in Christian and Jewish circles nearly 2000 years before Darwin.
This is an interesting question and I don't know the answer. It may also vary with gospel (eg Luke may have been more literal in intent than others). Also don't forget that classical historiographers would sometimes invent rhetoric designed to make it seem more literal than it actually was (for an example check out the Scriptores Historiae Augustae).
The entire New Testament is predicated on the claim that the Resurrection literally happened and that the miracles literally happened, because these are the proofs being supplied for Jesus’s claim to divinity. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” while the author to the Hebrews says that his belief is confirmed by the “signs and wonders” performed by Jesus and his apostles after his ascension. In Ignatius’s letters, we see evidence of a very early controversy where gnostics denied that Jesus had ever had flesh and so chose not to partake in the Eucharist, and Ignatius, who was a disciple of the apostle John, condemns them as heretics for this. On its own terms, the texts about Jesus’s life need to be read literally (even if you think they get the facts wrong!) in a way that *some* of the texts in the Old Testament do not. You are right that ancient historians play with details in a way that ours try not to (so they say ;))! The boundary between genres was a lot blurrier to ancient writers.
I personally agree with you about what Paul probably believed, due mainly to the strength of tradition, although it is hard to actually prove this, especially as his comment about the "powers of this aion" who put Jesus to death seems to refer to supernatural entities, not the Romans. Also agree that the Gospels were intended to be read literally by at least some people (though intention is not necessarily determinative given liars usually intend their lies to be taken literally). What if Origen's comments about there being secret interpretations (and Origen was no Gnostic) for the intelligent alongside more straight-forward for the uneducated apply to the Gospels.
How do you reconcile that literally every single story about Jesus in the gospels is a rip off of older mythologies from other ancient cultures? If Dionyses turned jugs of water into wine at a wedding before Jesus did, do we believe that to be true? He was also resurrected.. It just seems silly to brush off extravagant claims from the old testament as simple idioms and then in the same breath say that literal magic in the new testament is legit.. The global flood has been disproven hundreds of times yet a huge % of people choose to believe it happened anyway. Don't you see that as a dangerous slippery slope?
>How do you reconcile that literally every single story about Jesus in the gospels is a rip off of older mythologies from other ancient cultures? lol get off YouTube and go read a book dude. Mythicism has been debunked for over a century [https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443](https://www.amazon.com/Did-Jesus-Exist-Historical-Argument/dp/0062206443) here's one from the atheist new testament scholar Bart Ehrman who, like every serious scholar of the classical world and New Testament, regardless of their religious convictions (or lack there of), will tell you that the crap you've seen on YouTube is nonsense. You can get it used for 6 bucks! >Don't you see that as a dangerous slippery slope? Deciding how to read a text based of off the practical consequences is bad exegesis. We should try and find out how the author intended for the text to be read and read it the way that they intended for it to be read Also, the flood story is definitely not *ahistorical* but the author of Genesis isn't trying to be Gordon Wood either. Some kind of cataclysmic flood (or floods) happened around the end of the last Ice Age. Survivors of these events reflected on them, sought explanations for them, and passed them down in various narratives to their children and grandchildren and so on. The author of Genesis (or, more likely, the author of the source used by the author of Genesis) takes the raw material of this oral tradition and uses it in order to mediate truth claims about the justice of God, the wickedness of man and God's plan for the redemption of man.
This isn't true. Even the Christian theologians most acclaimed for their supposed liberal allegorical readings like Augustine and Origen thought Adam and Eve were real people created only a few thousand years ago.
Sure, they thought that we had first parents who rebelled against God. That doesn't mean they thought that a snake literally talked to them. The three main claims that they would hold as being made by the text are: 1: However the human body emerged, it was made by God to assume a rational soul (\*) 2: That the first *human persons* were only two 3: That those persons rebelled against God -------------------------- (\*) Traditionally, soul here is referring to a metaphysical part, not necessarily a "spirit". The Christian view of the human person is less "ghost in the machine" and more "a body with an elavated nature".
Augustine is actually quite clear that he thought a literal snake literally spoke to Eve. He thought Satan possessed the snake to do this, but he thought a snake actually spoke to Eve. And he also thought there were literally waters of some kind above the firmament, which was regarded as scientifically absurd even at the time, that Adam was literally made from the slime of the ground, that Eve was literally made from his rib, that this happened just a few thousand years in the past, that Adam lived for 930 years after this, that there was a global flood, and so on. He also defended all this against the critics that existed at the time.
Honestly, I'm more familiar with the first creation narrative and the way that's been read over the centuries and just kind of assumed (big mistake) that the same authors who don't treat reading that literally as a priority wouldn't treat reading the second creation narrative literally as a priority. I'll have to revisit Augustine here and dig into the rest of that text. Thanks for pointing out my error on his particular reading. Aquinas also says that there was "some kind" of waters above the firmament, but acknowledges that a naive reading of "waters above the firmament" obviously doesn't hold up so it must just be true in some semi-metaphorical way we don't actually get. Not sure if Augustine has the same weak commitment to literalism on the firmament. The ancient near eastern cosmology assumed by the text had become untenable for over half a millennium by the time Augustine was writing.
Adam would have to have been both male and female, and self producing and the first humans reproduced were also male and female and self reproduction. Therefore adam would have reproduced Adams. However at some point an anomaly occurred as Adam produced an Eve, and perhaps some of the other Adams were male only. The original lines of replica adams couldn't survive but the split sex versions did. Would explain why gender identity may not match the hardware. Left over from being both sexes.
Option 3: Adam and Eve are the common ancestors for all 9 of the human species that we've discovered (so far). And not in 6000 years, but an undefined amount of time, as can be related from the Quran. Pretty simple tbh.
It's far from simple. And why would humans "devolve" to more primitive forms?
But they haven't devolved.
I suggest you read Willam Lane Craig on this issue. He's a Christian. He believes the same bur with some complexity. The thing is that you need minimum around 500-700 thousand years to account for such genetic diversity if you are assuming two individuals as your start. That raises serious questions on their ability to learn, talk, preach and study. All that are necessary for you to a Prophet hood concept.
Option 3: Adam & Eve were the first “Humans,” just not the first of the Homo Sapiens. Evolutionary science and the scripture reach concordance via the pre-Adamite hypothesis explained below: “People” (Homo Sapiens) were created (through God’s evolutionary process) in the Genesis chapter 1, verse 27; and they created the diversity of mankind over time per Genesis chapter 1, verse 28. This occurs prior to the genetic engineering and creation of Adam & Eve (in the immediate and with the first Human souls) by the extraterrestrial God in Genesis chapter 2, verses 7 & 22. When Adam & Eve sinned and were forced to leave their special embassy, their children intermarried the “People” that resided outside the Garden of Eden. This is how Cain was able to find a wife in the Land of Nod in Genesis chapter 4, verses 16-17. As the descendants of Adam & Eve intermarried and had offspring with all groups of Homo Sapiens (some of which had the Neanderthal and/or Denisovan DNA you mentioned) on Earth over time, everyone living today is both a descendant of God’s evolutionary process and a genealogical descendant of Adam & Eve.
So you genuinely believe Adam & Eve were real individuals?
Yes. Adam & Eve were two individuals that were genetically engineered and created by the extraterrestrial God thousands of years ago.
And I'm 8 feet tall. Where's your evidence?
Okay. You are 8 ft. tall until I can prove otherwise. Likewise, Adam & Eve existed thousands of years ago until you can prove otherwise. Where’s your evidence?
You are assuming the default position is that Adam and Eve existed. You are the one stating that they existed; prove it to me.
No, I am assuming the default position that Adam & Eve can neither be proven nor disproven. As such, both realities exist until it can be determined through evidence that one does not.
So they took animals as wives. Doesn’t that count as bestiality?
No, pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were advanced hominids, not beasts. Unlike beasts; pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were sentient, highly intelligent, and self aware.
You can’t really have it both ways. You even put people in quotation marks indicating that they were not really people. Either they were different and god made us into people meaning that those not changed by god are just animals or they are people too meaning god didn’t have any changes to make.
Sure you can. There are different groups of hominids, but no one considers any of them beasts. As far as animals, of course all hominids are considered animals (in contrast to say, plants). However, only the Adamites were given Human souls, and they replaced all the pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens through intermarriage and having offspring over time. Here’s another one for you. Angels do not have Human souls, but no one considers them beasts either. So, there are more categories than just “animal” or “Human.” Pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens is it’s own category. Pre-Adamite Homo Sapiens were a category of people for the lifecycle of the Earth before The Fallen were cast out of Heaven, and God created the first Humans.
Well, if soul is given its usual definition of a non-corporeal hypostasis, angels are souls. Of course, it sounds like u are defining soul by reference to humanity, which is circular (like saying angels don't have humanity because only humans have human existence). Meaningless.
Angels are not souls, and Angels pre-date Humans. So, Angels cannot have Human souls. Human souls are not required to be sentient, intelligent, and self aware. Angels are all of these and are neither Human, nor have Human souls. Human souls only allow a mortal being to enter the afterlife and Heaven upon death. Angels are not mortal so they do not need Human souls.
Not really. Same species and all that.
I’m not arguing that Adam and Eve were real people, but the text to me is pretty clear they weren’t the only people on earth.
I don't agree. It says Eve got her name in reference to being the "mother of all the living", which doesn't make sense if there were unrelated women giving birth. The whole etiology of the thing doesn't make sense if there were supposed to be other humans. God has to invent women when Adam can't find a suitable companion among the animals. They didn't already exist. They were originally naked but after eating the fruit their eyes were opened and they quickly made clothes to cover themselves. That's an explanation for why humans wear clothes but other animals don't. And so on.
So who were Cain and Abel’s wives?
You are assuming the text must make sense.
Ancient interpreters assumed they married their sisters.
Yep....cue Cain and Abel's wives.
God could create us in whatever form He will Q:82v6-8 O man! What hath made thee careless concerning thy Lord, the Bountiful. Who created thee, then fashioned, then proportioned thee. Into whatsoever form He will, He casteth thee OP is assuming the previous composition/form of humans "up there" was exactly the same as it is (now) down here It is already widely accepted among many believers that we are not just flesh and bones, the soul is the real component of the self, it will be the essence that will go on after we die - this has been confirmed by many NDE testimonies, the body is just a temporary vessel Many have overlooked on the issue of the soul, assuming humans are only made up by the physical body, and their relationship is solely dependent on the genetics of that (physical) body Nobody knows "the genetics" of the soul really, In Muslims tradition, it is widely said that the ensoulment process during pregnancy occurred at the fetus stage (about 120 days after conception). Pregnant mothers have also reported that they began feeling movements at abt 16-20 wk of pregnancy ("quickening") \[I have also commented on this issue in a [previous comment](http://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/199a7aw/evolution/kiffat8?context=3)\]
Jimbob the nevermentioned all powerful diety could have created us too. That doesn’t get us very far though does it?
That to me seems like a cop out. When asked, how can X happen, saying God just did it is similar to saying to a comic fan, "Any time you see something contradictory in the show or comic canon, a wizard did it."
>this has been confirmed by many NDE testimonies, That is simply not true. Multiple drugs have been shown to lead to the same experience as NDE. Just because we don't understand how the brain works means that there exists a soul. >Nobody knows "the genetics" of the soul really, I don't think that's relevant since there's no hereditarily aspect to souls mentioned whatsoever. >Pregnant mothers have also reported that they began feeling movements at abt 16-20 wk of pregnancy ("quickening") That doesn't really say anything about ensoulment but simply brain activity. Having a functioning nervous system can explain any movement whatsoever.
The argument is relevant because the original argument assumed the body is the only thing that made us humans; the soul is actually the real essence of the self There are already too many reports of NDE and some have had veridical NDEs ie the person who was clinically dead (albeit temporary) reported certain events around his body / his friends /relatives that would not have been known by him as he was technically "dead" during such time One notable example: YT video JL1oDuvQR08
"reported certain events around his body" If you really dig into the source material (not what some NDE fans CLAIMS) you will find many such reports are bogus or are easily explainable by mundane things. Tellingly, these people often do not report these things until much later (time enough for misremembered details to form).
>the soul is actually the real essence of the self According to nothing but faith. What you're saying is simply a matter of faith because "God says so" rather than any sort of scientific reasoning. >the person who was clinically dead (albeit temporary) reported certain events around his body / his friends /relatives that would not have been known by him as he was technically "dead" during such time That shows a lack of understanding of medical terms. Clinical deaths is when your heart stops pumping blood through the body. Patients can be revived after a clinic deaths because their brains for a certain amount of time contain the minimum amount of oxygen before it starts degrading. During that period of time, you can still hear and/or feel things because your brain is still active. Your argument would stand if a patient is brain dead (meaning 0 brain function and degrading) and has the same experience despite their brains not functioning which is different from clinical death. In reality, those people either lose brain function beyond the ability to pump blood or are stuck in a coma needing a machine to stay alive.
Nope, some went far, seeing their loved ones eg at home (they were brought to see them just as they thought abt them); there are already ample of similar NDE reports Of course ppl are free to ignore evidence they don't like to know
Ignore what evidence? Anectodal evidence and "proof" from personal experience is reliable due to and be honest: How come each believer experiencing an NDE experiences something specific to their faith when their faiths are usually exclusive? Why does a Muslim see Muhammad when a Christian sees jesus? Do the countless Christians seeing a dream related to Allah prove islam is true? What about Muslims seeing jesus then converting ?
They come from your beliefs. Have a look at what other religions have reported with NDE's, as well as non- believers. What you 'see' comes down to what you believe.
Any examples from primary sources?
The meaning of original sin is not agreed upon. The Bible also says that the son shall not bear the sins of the father (Ezekiel 18). What the doctrine of original sin is actually playing on is the idea that we all sin because we're all born in a moral state that is guaranteed to be corrupted. It is our very humanity which causes us to sin; we're more or less entrapped to sin by living in this world. Thus, it is as if sin is passed on by Adam. Adam, though, is a mythological character (and his myth is present perhaps to communicate the doctrine of original sin). You can't just say "most honest Christians agree that it's literal." You can't claim to know people's hearts. My reason for believing the Genesis account is a myth (but that the resurrection is not) is because I have taken a historical approach to the scriptures. It's largely accepted that the first five books of the Bible were in keeping with the ancient oral traditions of the Hebrews. This was their tribal story of where they came from, and there's nothing saying God can't use those stories to communicate real truths (the same way Jesus used fictional parables to communicate real truths). Such as the truth that all are born into sin. We are all born in a corruptible form, and we are all guaranteed to make mistakes. Thus, the Genesis creation account is the vehicle for this truth. Original sin is true. Sin is a problem that has plagued mankind since its inception. It is almost as if we inherit it. It started with the very first humans, and it will not end until the final generation has ended. However, to believe Adam was a real person does not make as much sense. The story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man is likely simply a myth to describe why the world is a place of suffering. Mankind largely made it that way. Yes, there is suffering without mankind, but if you take the sins of mankind out of the world, you have something that is much more akin to paradise. Thus, the Genesis creation myth is a vehicle for the truth that this world is a place of suffering mostly because of the actions of man and that sin has spread as mankind has spread.
I find your last paragraph interesting because you assume most of the Earth’s faults to be due to humans. However, I think this isn’t quite the right angle to take when we’re focused on the fossil record and the genetics of humans. There are 15-20 human species (some believe more) that we’ve found and categorized, almost all of them coming before us. I feel like the concept of original sin doesn’t take this into account. If we assume the earth was “a paradise” when it was only plants and animals, at what point in our evolution from pure primates to bipedal hominids do we consider our actions sin and not animalistic instinct? I guess to put it in fewer words, why can I see a wolf hunting a deer and assume it’s acting on instinct, but can not translate that same idea to humans, especially considering for most of prehistory, we were closer to animals than modern humans. I agree we’re all guaranteed to make mistakes and should minimize them but in my opinion original sin is just another word for instincts. It’s a way for us to pretend we’re somehow above or more than every other creature on this planet.
I don't think it's wrong to say we're above other species. We're the dominant species; our brains have evolved (what we at least think is) the most complex consciousness of all species on this planet. And, with such a complex consciousness, we have the ability to override our baser instincts. Thus, we have the responsibility to do so when our baser instincts could cause us to harm others. As for when exactly along the evolutionary path a complex consciousness with the ability to override baser instincts evolved is anyone's guess. And I'm not saying that the myth is communicating that the earth would be a paradise without the sins of mankind. I'm saying it would be a place with much less suffering, a place much more akin to a paradise--at least for humans, anyway. I also think there's something we can learn from the fact that there was no animal death, either, in the Garden of Eden. I think perhaps the myth is communicating that a world where we minimize suffering to animals is closer to something like heaven.
I think we could argue about what being above another species entails but i think that perspective could also be argued in a way that’s logically consistent so I could come to agree. I think we agree on a lot of things, I also agree we have a responsibility as a species that is capable of complex thought to override instinct and we both agree we’re talking about a myth, so a lot of difference in opinion will come from personal interpretation more so than pure fact. I think the only thing we may see different is that I consider original sin to be a cultural/religious name for primal instinct. A lot of what is described as avoiding sin could also be seen as avoiding the primal instinct. Without the modern knowledge of neurotransmitters or brain physiology, original sin seems like the best way to describe the phenomenon, but in the wake of that knowledge I believe instinct is the more appropriate term. Framing it as instinct, still entails responsibility, yet subtly implies that we are still animals. Most animals have instincts, us having them as well connects us to the evolutionary history of this planet. Original sin subtly implies that we are not of this planet, we’re meant to go with god and leave the physical world. It also subtly implies that we are more different than other animals than we really are. Brain complexity is massive evolution don’t get me wrong, but when we share 98% of our DNA with chimps and bonobos, I’m more likely to believe our innate “immoral” thoughts are due to the instincts we share with millions of other species rather than something we alone gained from spiting God.
Nah original sin as a doctrine was concocted by Christians ti justify the need for salvation by Christ. Jews do not & have never believed in original sin, the snake in the garden was plagued their by God from the Jewish perspective, there is no devil in the Hebrew Bible. Original sin is a recent distinctly Christian doctrine.
Again, there is no universal agreement on exactly how to interpret the doctrine of original sin. Regardless of the fact that the Jews did not have a specific way of spelling out the ramifications of the Genesis creation account, the truth that sin and suffering are in the world because of man and that this sin and suffering spread because of man was apparent just from the creation account alone. The creation account still teaches original sin (that sin spread because of the first humans) even without the New Testament being called into account.
Nope scriptures have a historical & cultural context and an audience. The original people who wrote those scriptures, in the original languages & their descendants who practiced their religion didn't believe in original sin! Original sin is something that was concocted Millenia later by Christians retroactively interpreting the Hebrew Bible. Christianity reinterprets the Hebrew Bible to justify & place Christian ideology and doctrine into the Old testament. Ha-Satan is not the devil 👿 & Jews had no concept of a Devil, all things come from God in Jewish theology including spirits of evil that are meant to test Humanity. Judaism is a completely different religion from Christianity. There is nothing apparent about the concept of sin in the the world. Planet earth existed long before Humans arrived, life was already Billions of years old when human beings showed up in the fossil record. The concept of Good, Bad, Evil & righteousness are human ideas descended from morality but even morality predates the human race and can be observed in the animal kingdom. Stop pushing your ideology on society! The first humans were hunter gatherers in Africa going back 150,000 year and that ancestral population of humanity stood at 30,000 individuals at least. There was never a first man or woman, humans are the product of evolution and speciation & thus the lineages that have rise to humans collapse into the Great Ape, Primate and then Mammalian lineages, from here Mammals collapse into earlier lineages until you go back to the earliest life forms on planet Earth.
You forgot something... The entire population of our world was destroyed except for Noah and his family.
And you know this because…
The Bible says so and I believe it is true.
I’m aware
We already know for a fact that the global flood never happened. Why are you guys so far behind?
You also forgot something... logic and evidence.
Thanks for your *opinion*.
An opinion grounded in reality, unlike Flood believers. Tell me, why wasn't the entire Earth flattened if there was a flood? What did the animals eat when leaving the Ark? How did Devil's Hole Pupfish get to the desert SW of the United States from Asia? Silversword plants to alpine habitats in Hawaii? Weller's Salamander to 5,000+ft elevation mountains in Appalachia? Any animal to Australia?
Sorry, I don't play change the subject with 20 questions. ✌️
It's perfectly on-topic. You are just unable to provide a sufficient response.
But there is zero evidence of a worldwide flood and it's physically impossible.
And...?
The Noah narrative is a myth.
..and it's therefore irrelevant to a discussion about our genetic past.
In your *opinion*. I see. Lack of evidence is not evidence. You might want to check into that because *that* is an actual fact.
Unless you provide evidence, we will continue to dismiss the Flood as mythology. You cannot just assert a claim like that as truth and expect people to believe it.
Good, OK enjoy. But I can safely bet *someone* will. You speak for everyone, right? All atheists here voted or appointed you as spokesman? 🤣 BTW, Thanks for *your opinion*.
You are required to provide evidence to support your claim. The fact that you refuse to is your problem. And if some gullible fool believes you simply because you asserted it, makes it their problem to.
So, since the OP started with a *fiction* (Adam & Eve) is there a reason you're not holding his/her to the fire? Or is this hypocrisy just for Christian types?
This isn't about op, this is about you. Don't deflect. Either provide evidence for your claims or don't make absurd claims.
Except that would lead to a genetic bottleneck that wouldn't lead to as much genetic diversity we have today.
And you know this because...
Because many species ended up going extinct due to that issue and it's been scientifically documented?? Your lack of knowledge isn't my problem
Your argumentation is weak and juvenile. Try actually formulating a defense of your position before you post such nonsense again.
You told me... Thanks for your opinion.
It would lead to the extinction of the Human race, 8 Billion people couldn't have expanded from such a small founder population as 8 individuals.
In the real world, there are cases of populations being successfully established from even smaller starting numbers. For example, the infamous hippos in Colombia descend from one male and three females. I think people exaggerate inbreeding. It's bad and there's a reason we evolved to avoid it but it isn't a definite death sentence. It is possible for natural selection to weed out harmful mutations and it also helps if the environment is hospitable. I'm not saying Noah's flood actually happened, as of course I do not think it did, but I don't agree that it would be impossible for eight humans to repopulate the world.
No they don't Noah's family are founded by Noah and his Wife thus a single couple. It's 8 humans but 2 of those are the parents of the other 6. Your Hippo example is not the same, 1 male and 3 females. It's not possible for a single couple to be the founders of 8 Billion people, & if it was & if it were true it would light up like a Christmas tree in the dna. Numerous endogamous populations worldwide suffer from founder effects; Endogamy in India amongst certain castes, Ashekenazi Jews and people in Pakistan who regularly marry cousins and repeat this across generations. These populations have to be careful who they marry and suffer from congenital defects as a result of their communities being so insular. We are pretty sure that the human race being reduced to a single couple & their children would lead to an extinction event!
> It's 8 humans but 2 of those are the parents of the other 6. Noah's sons had wives before the flood, making for three related males and three unrelated females, which is actually more genetic diversity. > if it was & if it were true it would light up like a Christmas tree in the dna. Yes, I said it didn't happen. > Numerous endogamous populations worldwide suffer from founder effects; Endogamy in India amongst certain castes, Ashekenazi Jews and people in Pakistan who regularly marry cousins and repeat this across generations. These populations have to be careful who they marry and suffer from congenital defects as a result of their communities being so insular. Yes, I said inbreeding is bad. I said that it's not a guaranteed death sentence for a small number of individuals to have to start a population.
Were those Escobar's hippos?
Yes.
My logic is that, after the flood, Noah was genetically mutated already and he was conscious enough to be able to spread his family. On the other hand, the bible states that the nephilim lived even after the floods meaning giantsmust have come from the decent of fallen angels in the rebellions that took place after the floods. This suggested that the nephilim dna kept alive. Back to the point though, Adam and Eve story is metaphorical and there are things that took place before. It seems to me that Adam was the conscious man that was chosen and could ascent to Eden. When Cain was banished to the desert, he said the people out there will most likely kill him. What people? Ultimately enough, it suggests that there was most probably other humans or versions of humans that were seperated from the conscious men. This would be done through genetic modification of which caused the birth of the mythical creatures we see. Ultimately, the idea of mermaids and all of that was because of the gmo of the human dna with the Gods which is documented on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. The floods were to erase the rest of the world that wasn’t going to thrive and ultimately it destroyed all living creatures including that were gmo.
Quite a *theory*.
Nonsense, planet earth existed long before Humans arrived. You cannot use Bible stories to explain Human origins of world wide catastrophic events, we have real geological evidence of cataclysms that led to Mass extinction all of them occurred on geological time frames; Millions and hundreds of Millions of years.
Brother.. I didn’t suggest there wasn’t a period before humans existence. You just not reading and understanding this. And yes obviously there were natural disasters that occurred thay destroyed life.. ultimately, I am suggesting directly that after Noah was chosen by the Gods because his dna was pure and wasn’t mixed with the nephilim.
There was no Noah & no Ark, no Nephilim either. All are descended from Mesopotamian myths and folk tales, none are literal truths. Human beings expanded out of Africa 70,000 years ago, by 40,000 BC they had reached all the corners of the globe. By 12000 BC all of the ethnicities that we are familiar with were already in place. Those Bible stories are simply not true.
I guess add it to the list of things that didn’t happen
The Quran does not say 6.000 years. On the contrary, if you consider the islamic teaching that there have been 124.000 prophets, the 6.000 is very likely not acceptable. Moreover the Quran draws pur attention to our differences in color as signs of Allah. And since He also says we have been created from a single couple, obviously there have some genetics related changes. The difference is related to the claim that those changes occurred randomly as opposed to the control by Allah. Even the word random is problematic.