Perhaps that's why there is so much madness in the world. ;-)

From the way I see it Adam just means man(kind) and Eve means woman(kind) so therefore there was more than two of each sex as the "starter" so to speak :o)

Are you serious? you haven't noticed humanities little 'quirks'?

"Historicity Many Biblical scholars consider Adam and Eve as an example of a story focusing on the teaching of perceived fundamental truths; the narrative's purpose is to convey the importance and truth of sin and human rebellion in their traditions, regardless of historical accuracy. All, some, or none of the actual events of the narrative may have actually happened, or been embellished, although there is no real evidence of embellishment of this narrative in the Masoretic Text. Adam and Eve are considered in Evangelical Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Judaism as real historical people, as Genesis 5:4 records Adam within a genealogy. In the New Testament, Paul references Adam and Eve many times, especially contrasting Adam with Jesus where Paul writes in the 5th chapter of Romans "12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— 13 (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. 15 But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many." This is taken to support a historical Adam by fundamentalists as some theologians interpret Adam's sin as a historical event that changed humankind. Others argue that Paul could be merely using the myth as a teaching method, or that Paul believed in Adam and Eve but was mistaken on this count. However, Jesus also made reference to the story of Adam and Eve, in Matthew 19:4,5. Adam is also listed in Jesus' genealogy in Luke 3. Others view Adam and Eve as metaphorical for every person when they first sin and God seeks them out. Those who hold this view point out that adam can also be translated humankind. Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason prompted some Christians to interpret the Bible as strict history; William Whiston was one such early scholar. James Ussher calculated Adam and Eve's life at approximately 4,000 BC, basing on the Genealogies of Genesis and Table of Nations. In modern times the theory of evolution has challenged the Christian belief in the historicity of Adam and Eve." "Ancestry and evolutionary biology The idea of a single male and female human ancestor is contradictory to evolutionary theory. According to this theory, the population of humans gradually evolved from other hominans. Somewhat confusingly however, geneticists have identified individuals dubbed "Y-chromosomal Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve". Mitochondrial Eve is the common matrilineal ancestor of all humans alive today whilst Y-chromosomal Adam is the common patrilineal ancestor who lived many millennia after Mitochondrial Eve." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_eve Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

Of course it means that. But originally their DNA would have been uncorrupted. As sin worked its way throughout creation, however, DNA became more easily corrupted and it was necessary to put restrictions on who you married. Even science acknowledges the existence of one woman from whom we are all descended, my friend. She is called genetic Eve. Science doesn't believe she was the only woman,though. The Bible does. That is the difference.

That would be true no matter what "origins of man" you subscribe to..and if you think about it, that might explain the murderers, deviates, monsters among us...the wrong genes coupled in one body yield disaster. Somewhere in time something started that became us..whether your belief is of a religious nature or scientific, it doesn't really matter. We didn't exist, something happened and now we do exist..quite amazing when one thinks about it! :)

are you on crack?

The Biblical problem is much less problematic than the scientific one. The Biblical problem can either be resolved by (a) postulating an initial genetic perfection that only gets corrupted through subsequent generations by genetic drift and/or "effects of sin", or (b) the patent Biblical evidence that Adam and Eve, Cain, Seth, and Able, walk out into a world with other people, also created by God, but not descended from His initial Covenant Bearer: Adam. Arguably these initial humans were no more related to each other than are snowflakes. The scientific problem is more difficult, at least for evolutionary theory. If there was once a race of pre-humans, the odds of them producing two humans of opposite sexes within proximity of each other are "slim" to say the least. The odds of them producing enough humans of each sex in close enough proximity to make for an adequate gene pool is preposterous -- unless there's an outside agent or overarching design that causes this happen.

You mean humans are not problematic? look around nobody on earth is normal according to biblical standards. Even one of the first people on earth Cain killed his own brother,what is considered normal?

adam and eve were as perfect as humans will ever be. its all been downhill from them. adam and eve also lived to be almost a thousand years old and had many many children, besides the first two sons. they lived to see many hundreds of generations. interbreeding was not as bad as it would be today since there bodies were pure(so to speak). the kings and royalty in hawaii and the polynesians interbred even into the 1950s when world war II brought in thousands of outsiders. they are an example of what can happen in current history of marrying within your family.

It's the disgusting truth of the Creation theory that Christians try to brush under the carpet by saying that their DNA was so perfect that it only became corrupted at a later stage and thus incest became a negative thing at that point. They point to what they see as similarities in scientific theory to Adam and Eve, however anyone with half a brain knows that the two are entirely different. One simply proposes the theorized starting point of our particular strain of DNA in a long line of countless lifeforms, the other proposes man being created by a perfect God, who then created Woman out of man. Note that this is actually the opposite order to the theory. Really, ask yourself this - is it that shocking to you to know that, in a Scientific theory that has mankind evolving from previous species, male and female human DNA had a starting point? Trying to wrap this up as some kind of validation of the Adam and Eve story is completely see-through, because it doesn't actually reveal anything. And the other angle is that Christians are forced to accept that Adam and Eve probably didn't exist, and so say it's a metaphorical tale that you are meant to take a lesson from and nothing else. That's fine - infact, I'm of the opinion that the entire Bible is a social document supposed to be taken as merely lessons in morality (which - as an ancient text in an always changing social culture would - eventually becomes outdated and either no longer makes sense or is no longer acceptable, such as the stoning to death of homosexuals) - however they don't then allow this way of thinking to encompass the rest of the Bible, they cherry pick what they think is literal and to be taken as such, and what they think is metaphor - mainly on the basis of what is no longer a socially acceptable or scientifically creditable belief. So this is why people now either say that Adam and Eve didn't happen, or that incest was simply OK at the time (ignoring the various species on this planet that have in-built defence mechanisms against incest, suggesting it's never genetically OK), because modern knowledge denies it of its plausibility. And they go throughout the Bible, and throw several other stories out that are also no longer plausible - the parting of the red sea, Noah's Ark etc - until they end up with something that scarcely resembles what they started off with, except they CAN'T accept that the entire thing might be metaphorical, because then there'd be no God and the whole religion would fall apart.

If humanity stems from incest, it would certainly explain why people are always so goddamn stupid.

"Incestuous couplings" are a problem because of genetic defects, which may not have been as prevalent shortly after man was created. For example, Methusaleh is said to have lived for over 900 years, and Adam for as many as 600. Our bodies wear out much faster since the flood, plagues, the increasingly rapid mutation of diseases, and so on. It does help explain some of the variety found in the human race.

There was no biblical Adam and no biblical Eve. The Bible is a work of fiction. Please get over it and read some decent text on evolutionary biology. It is kinda fun to see all the contortion creationists have to go through to make it seem to fit though. How about Cain and Abel's wives? Where'd they come from?

So it's ok to rely on science for those bits that appear to support creationism but to ignore or ridicule the rest? :-)

You are mixing two different stories - the Science Story, and the Bible Story (Genesis is True flavour). The two are incompatible. You cannot ask scientific questions about the Book of Genesis - it would be like asking questions about Rambo and the Tooth Fairy. Note that this applies only to the Book of Genesis. The rest of the Bible, which talks about particular events rather than the origin of the whole world and all species, is not incompatible with science. (It is not confirmed by science, either.) I do not understand why a belief in Jesus and his divine origin, as described in the New Testament, immediately says that stories written down hundreds of years before his birth, and passed by oral tradition for hundreds of years before that, must be the exact truth.

Haven't they? Isn't the world full of troubles?

Adam and Eve are just two characters in a book.

Wow - FIRST - to answer this question and eliminate the connotations of incest, we would need to look at the specific covenant that God made with man over time, and this question really focuses on the second one, the Adamic covenant. In this covenant, it was not against the laws of the time to marry one's sibling. Build into that that this is not Cleveland, Ohio in 2008, but the beginning of man on earth, and the context shows the wisdom. Under the law of Moses (several key covenants later) incest became an issue and illegal. SECOND - problems with human development have many causes, all tracing back to the FALL of man. --- And the FALL of man happened BEFORE any marriages were allowed between siblings and other close relatives.

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