Simple Theist:

I haven't posted here too often, but I, too, occasionally get those types of responses from people like Mr. Rage - "hey, why did so-and-so say or do this". Because I'm a theist, I'm somehow endowed with the ability to KNOW EXACTLY why somebody (who's mentioned in the Bible, for example) said, thought or did something 2,000 years ago - or 4,000 years ago.

But it's not just Mr. Rage - this website is rife with comments from people who ask these same types of silly questions.

My opinion - I think alot of the posters here are very young - teenagers / early twenties - with very little living and life experiences under their belts.

So it's understandable if their points-of-view / opinions / beliefs / etc come across as very naive and childlike.

I guess responses from people like me can be ignored, because you know how people like me are.

Score one ad hominem.

Except I didn't post any question like this, nor do I assume that sort of knowledge from anyone.

Score one straw man.

(By the way, I find it funny that the person you directed your post at, Simple Theist, told me to go find a Jewish person to answer my question. But Simple Theist is polite and doesn't like to badger people, so we should just let him/her off the hook.)

No one likes answering people like me asking silly questions!

Score another ad hominem.

Yeah, those teenagers and early 20 somethings, nobody needs to listen to them. They're basically a child until they reach some arbitrary age. This is classic ad hominem.

And let's not ignore the fact that you have no demographic evidence to back your opinion up. Oh, and many of the core users of this site (including me) are in an older demographic.

One ad hominem. One naked assertion.

Broncosfan, you are aware of the forum you're in, right? You've broken rule #1 three times. Are you willing to have a decent conversation? because that's what I'm trying to do.

MR. Rage, Just so you know, I told you to find a Jewish person to answer your question because I figure they have to have a tradition for who Cain's wife is. I just don't know it.

Forgett about what I said about Josephus. I took the time and he doesn't mention where cain got his wife. I'm guessing that most people assume his wife was also his sister. 

Well for the record let me also point out that primate studies show even gorillas have an incest taboo.  Gorillas who are raised as siblings (even if they're not actually siblings) will tend not to mate with each other, but will seek mates outside their own family group.

Chimpanzees likewise avoid the incest problem by an instinctive behavior that drives females away from their home troop and to another troop where males are unlikely to be her brothers.

 This prevalance of strategies to avoid potential mating with siblings and promote diversification of the gene pool tracks waaaay back into all kinds of much smaller-brained monkeys and other social primates.

So from an evolutionary standpoint, the desire to avoid mating with a sibling goes back much further than the advent of humanity.  That's consistent with what evolutionary theory would predict: if it interferes with your survival, then populations will tend to develop a hard-wired inhibition against it.

So once again, the Bible is incompatable with science by suggesting that it's only laws and customs that keep people from mating with their siblings. Doesn't it make a lot more sense that this would be a psychologically hard-wired behavior?

Simple Theist, are you saying that the exception proves the rule?  The fact that some humans commit incest proves that everyone would if they could? That doesn't sound right to me.

I would think it would depend on the monkies.

Also remember that non-human primates usually don't know who their father is, so they're often going on who they grew up around rather than some kind of knowlege of kinship.  And primates sometimes mate for fun or social bonding and not to reproduce, so it's more complicated than that.  For example, Bonobos will mate with anybody in their own troop--regardless of gender or sibling relations--except that mothers and sons never mate.  That's one relationship that would be very likely to produce inbreeding and thus is maladaptive, as opposed to mother-daughter coupling, which bonobos do.

You didn't read through the thread, didn't you?

Interesting idea (albeit disturbing), but unfortunately for you, the bible doesn't say anything supporting this. Your trying to add on story to make an explanation.

Apparently you don't know much about genetics. There is no such thing as a pure genetic code (Although Hitler and the Klan would agree with). It doesn't matter how different two peoples genetic material are from each other. Within just a few generations, you would have large scale genetic abnormalities leading to infertility or death.

Again, your adding to the bible. The bible says nothing to suggest this. It even has Adam and Eve having a third son (Seth) to replace Able. Which begs the question, 'Why replace Able if they already had other children?' Simple answer, because they didn't have any other children, and since Able was dead, and Cain was exiled, they needed a new child to continue their line. Also, if the bible takes time to state the birth of Seth, and even gives some of the genology for Cain (who was exiled, and somehow started a city after that), why not even mention the existence of other children? Again, simple answer, there wasn't any to mention.

Also, while we are on the subject of the story of Adam and Eve, why was Cain so afraid of somebody was going to kill him after he went into exile if he was leaving the only two other people on the planet (who also happened to be his parents)? (Genesis 4:14)

 Piper, you don't understand how the Bible works, and you're arguing from silence. Just because it doesn't mention other relatives, does not prove they weren't there. The Bible does not claim to be an exhasutive treatement of all ancient historical matters. It gives us key people related to key events. The author of this thread posed a question, and I gave an answer. By the way, no I didn't read the whole question because I couldn't. Some banner or advertisement is blocking part of my screen. I can't see everything.

As for genetics, your argument might be valid today in our current condition, but the world and man were much different in biblical times. All of our current biological abnormalities have developed over time. Adam and Eve had a pure and healthy genetic code. You know the second law of Thermodynamics in that things break down over time. The gene pool in Adam's time was pure.

 Ok, now you're asserting that a pure genetic code would still cause problems through in breeding. My question to you is: how could you possibly know that? Who on earth have you observed to have a pure genetic code in the first place? Second, can you show me such a person who actually engaged in in- breeding and produced genetic abnomalities? Lasty, how do you know Adam and Even didn't have a pure genetic code? You said it was nonsense, but you weren't there to observe them. You're speculating. When we put God in the equation, such in breeding with no side affects would be possible. If He can create the universe from nothing, I'm inclined to believe He would have no problem preserving the gene pool from Adam. And yes, they did have many children as the other poster rightly stated.

Answers to various questions in this thread:

(1) Since Adam & Eve were the first man and woman and Cain was their son, Cain's wife had to be either one of his sisters or a niece.

(2) People lived 700-900 years back then and had a long productive life. Eve probably had hundreds of kids.

(3) Adam and Eve had perfect chromosomes, so incest was not wrong. Their chromosomes stayed pretty much damage free due to the hydrosphere. This was a layer of clear water like our ozone layer, except that it protected people much better from the sun's harmful rays.

 (4) It was only after the flood that mutations crept into our genome. During the flood the hydrosphere came down and covered the earth. Also a lot of water came from below the land. Remember, there were no oceans before the flood. The earth was all one land mass. Because people had hundreds of children, the earth filled up, which is why we have lots of oil (dead fauna) and coal (dead flora).

(5) After the flood, the human genome became more and more corrupted due to the rays of the sun and God had to outlaw incest.

(6) Each of us has 2 copies of each gene. If one is bad, the good one will keep us alive, usually. Brother and sister often have bad copies of the same gene. So, if the have a child, the child has a 50% chance of getting the bad copy from the mom and a 50% chance of getting a bad copy from the dad. This gives the child a 25% chance of getting 2 bad copies of a crucial gene. With no good copy, it dies or is deformed, or sickly. So, incest is outlawed. This was not true in the pre-flood era when everyone had only good copies of each gene and there was no possibility of getting a bad copy.

"I will lead you into the pit, laughing!" from Karl Marx's black mass, "Eulanem."

GAH!  Kill me now before my head explodes.

Why is this thread still active? The point is that the Adam/Eve creation thing is absurd. Going around in circles about incest and genetics is riidiculus. Just stop already. The problem here is that to make all the rational points about how absurd it is you first have to accept that some omnipotent being created Adam and Eve. But as soon has that god is invoked then rational objections fly out the window. If the god can create Eve from a rib then it sure as heck is possible to create a completely separate genome at the same time. And Cain's wife could have popped out of the mud while he was down by the river. You can't allow an omnipotent god into the conversation without discarding any reasonable sense of cause and effect.

Atheist: Why did god do it that way? It doesnt make sense.

Creationist. I don't know. Because he can? It doesn't have to make sense.

Athiest: Dead from head trauma from beating head against a brick wall.

I'm inclined to agree with you, especially after reading Apotheon's conspiracy theory about Mason's taking over the world for the Antichrist.  I'm still shaking my head from that nonsense. 

Nice post Tankalish. The question is flawed becasue Adam and Eve were not real people. Thus, therefore, ergo, no need to debate inbreeding.

I personally wouldn't correct you for being wrong, tankalish, but the Answers in Genesis people would:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i1/god_evolution.asp

According to AiG, your liberalistic "theistic evolution" position is the first step on the slippery slope to the end of Christianity:

..and therefore, you can question the truth of *any* part of the Bible, including its positions on moral and theological issues.

These guys are all about starting with the assumption of the literal truth of the bible, then trimming and stretching science to fit.

[MOD EDIT - fixed link]