# In defense of Genesis **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 26, 2022, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745 "2022-03-26T14:40:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/1 "2022-03-26T14:40:22Z")
As a stone-cold absolutist atheist who has delighted for decades in mocking the Bible as an absurd document replete with logical problems that a clever ten-year-old can point out, I have to admit that one element in Genesis that I’ve been mocking actually holds up, unless someone wants to point out something I’m missing here. Genesis says that God created Adam and Eve, who had two sons, so where did the women the sons procreated with come from? Ha Ha Ha–stupid morons! Either Cain and Abel screwed their own sisters, or God created other women at the same time he created Adam and Eve. (Or possibly Cain and Abel screwed their mom, but that’s disgusting, making us all descended from some messed up motherfuckers.) But thinking it over, Genesis doesn’t say that Adam and Eve were the only people God ever created, just that they were the first. So assume that God created thousands of women, and Cain and Abel impregnated all of them, and their kids multiplied and were fruitful. If that’s the case, and nothing in Genesis says that God didn’t create courtesans by the boatload, then Adam’nEve’s Sons ™ could still have been the ancestors of the entire human race without committing incest. It would have been mildly incestuous for THEIR grandchildren to have had sex with their cousins, but we still do that (at least those of us with attractive cousins) so this much-mocked passage in Genesis is much more defensible than I had thought. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/2 "2022-03-26T14:56:42Z")
No matter what origin story (scientific or mythological) you accept for the human race, I could ask you: if there was a First Human, whom did that first human have sex with to make more humans? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/3 "2022-03-26T15:08:29Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > But thinking it over, Genesis doesn’t say that Adam and Eve were the only people God ever created, just that they were the first. Why would the Bible fail to mention something as wondrous as the creation of other human beings? > [@](#): > > So assume that God created thousands of women, and Cain and Abel impregnated all of them, and their kids multiplied and were fruitful. I can see where some modern religious figures (hello, Warren Jeffs) might like that story. but making the First Human Progeny into sex fiends is a bit much. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/4 "2022-03-26T15:25:08Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > whom did that first human have sex with Cute monkeys? ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/5 "2022-03-26T15:26:54Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Why would the Bible fail to mention something as wondrous as the creation of other human beings? Because Genesis is only about the first weeks’ creation. Maybe he took a few decades before realizing “Oh, yeah, gotta make me some additional girls! Me damn, I knew I forgot something.” ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/6 "2022-03-26T16:53:41Z")
With all that hard science actually tells us about the origins and development of human life - why worry about how logical the Biblical origin myth is, in the first place? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/7 "2022-03-26T17:19:29Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > Either Cain and Abel screwed their own sisters, or God created other women at the same time he created Adam and Eve. (Or possibly Cain and Abel screwed their mom, but that’s disgusting, making us all descended from some messed up motherfuckers.) Welcome to Messed Up Motherfucker Landia. This was before God created rules that lead to our feeling disgust. Before that it was just one big orgy going on and babes poppin’ out all over the place. The only rule was be fruitful and multiply, and they did and it was good till God said it wasn’t. Really no rules of such things back then were given, but yes it is a common belief that God created other beings that were bread-able with the first 2 prototypes of humanity 1.0. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/8 "2022-03-26T17:26:22Z")
Why wouldn’t God just make approximately the same number of men and women (if you claim he made manually more after Adam and Eve)? Does it have to be some harem fantasy for the OP? ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/9 "2022-03-26T17:38:22Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > But thinking it over, Genesis doesn’t say that Adam and Eve were the only people God ever created, just that they were the first. So assume that God created thousands of women, and Cain and Abel impregnated all of them, and their kids multiplied and were fruitful. > > If that’s the case, and nothing in Genesis says that God didn’t create courtesans by the boatload, then Adam’nEve’s Sons ™ could still have been the ancestors of the entire human race without committing incest. It would have been mildly incestuous for THEIR grandchildren to have had sex with their cousins, but we still do that (at least those of us with attractive cousins) so this much-mocked passage in Genesis is much more defensible than I had thought. My issue with this assumption would be that it means that God then created new humans who were guilty of original sin, despite being directly created by God. This seems, well, even more unfair than most traditional interpretations of that concept. Alternately, there would have been these alternate ‘sinless’ humans, that were forced to breed with the descendants of A&E, dooming -their- otherwise blameless children to unlimited suffering. The concept of many from few, in conjunction with our understanding of incest laws, taboos, traditions and genetic risk is bad no matter what interpretation you pick. My ‘best’ answer is if we stick with the least squicky option, is that as @Roger_That mentioned upthread, Genesis is all about the ‘highlight’ reel of the first stage of life on Earth, and afterwards God created new people to be husbands and wives (possibly for umpteen early generations), and as Eve, created them new from the flesh of the existing humans. As all existing humans were already tainted by original sin, he side-steps that moral issue, and the genetic issue is same as Eve - it’s God, he can create an unrelated clone if he wants too. The other interpretation is that incest is only a sin to us later, fallen generations - the earliest humans were created nearly perfect (see their long lives, etc) and thus, not prey to modern inbreeding issues until many, many generations later. Still squicky to us, be we’re the poor overly-photocopied editions of the last days with too many other errors to count. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/10 "2022-03-26T18:02:28Z")
> [@Chingon](#): > > Does it have to be some harem fantasy for the OP? If we want to be sure that everyone on earth is descending from Adam’n’Eve ™, then sure. Two men, Cain and Abel, are all we know of from the next generation, and they’re sufficient to keep several haremfuls incessantly pregnant. Once you start introducing Other Independently Created Males as well as females, now we have a whole 'nother line of descent, in which some of us, most of us, do not derive from Adam’n’Eve ™, and we can’t have that, can we? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/11 "2022-03-26T18:44:48Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > Two men, Cain and Abel, are all we know of from the next generation Nope. Genesis 5:3-4: > [@](#): > > When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/12 "2022-03-26T18:50:36Z")
We could also have many children of Adam and Eve, both sons and daughters, and spouses created for each of them. After all, most of humanity isn’t descended from Cain and Abel, because Abel got ganked, and Cain got cursed for ganking him. Cain and Abel were mentioned specifically because of the whole fratricide story, and Seth was mentioned to make it clear that those weren’t the only children, but there wasn’t any reason to mention any others. And daughters, in that culture, especially wouldn’t have been mentioned (for comparison, do you really believe that Jacob flipped a coin twelve times in a row, and came up “boy” every time?). Oh, and thanks for the reminder, @Thudlow_Boink . Yup, the Bible explicitly says that there were “other sons and daughters”. So that’s at least five kids after Cain and Abel, and plausibly quite a few more (when your whole purpose for existence is to populate the Earth, and you live for 930 years, you can end up with a lot of offspring). ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/13 "2022-03-26T19:22:14Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. I stand corrected, but my point still holds: unless there was a whole lotta incest going on, in which the human race would be wall-to-wall inbred crutters, all the other sons and daughters would still have rendered us all as Adam’n’Eve’s ™ descendants if they’d procreated with other humans Independently Created over that 800 year period. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/14 "2022-03-26T19:29:56Z")
Where do the Nephilim fit in? > **[In the Bible, who were the "giant sons of God"?](https://www.straightdope.com/21343109/in-the-bible-who-were-the-giant-sons-of-god)** > > A STAFF REPORT FROM THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/15 "2022-03-26T19:59:28Z")
Well, there was one- Eve, or if not her, then someone much like her. And she had sex with another Homo Species that was nearly identical to her, that allowed inbreeding. We know that Homo Sapiens can & did interbreed with Homo Neanderthals, for example. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429904-500-found-closest-link-to-eve-our-universal-ancestor/#:~:text=If%20you%20trace%20back%20the,years%20ago%20in%20southern%20Africa](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429904-500-found-closest-link-to-eve-our-universal-ancestor/#:~:text=If%20you%20trace%20back%20the,years%20ago%20in%20southern%20Africa). There has to be a first of any species. Some more scientific Christians think that Adam and Eve were the first human with _souls,_ thus they could tell (after eating the Fruit) the difference between Good and Evil. Plenty of other “humans” around for them to breed with, and pass on the Soul. Those early souless versions just died, no afterlife. > [@ParallelLines](#): > > Alternately, there would have been these alternate ‘sinless’ humans, that were forced to breed with the descendants of A&E, dooming -their- otherwise blameless children to unlimited suffering. You forget the concept of “Virtuous Pagans”, those who were not part of the Jewish Compact and had not been exposed to Christianity. They would live in the First Circle of Hell, which was quite pleasant - wiki: _The first circle is [Limbo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo), the space reserved for those souls who died either before [baptism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism) or those who hail from non-Christian cultures. They live eternally in a castle set on a verdant landscape, but forever removed from heaven._ So their only punishment is not to know God. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/16 "2022-03-26T20:15:24Z")
If you are suggesting that the Bible is incomplete and ambiguous, then yes. I agree. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.E](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.e/32/8932_2.png) [@Mr.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.E)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/17 "2022-03-26T20:38:50Z")
Genesis 4:13-18: > 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” > > 15 But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. > > 17 Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech. At this point in Genesis, Adam and Eve are the only other living people mentioned. Who is the “Whoever” that Cain is afraid of? Who named the land of Nod? Where did Cain’s wife come from? Who lived in the city of Enoch that Cain built? The Bible goes on for quite some length before it mentions Seth, but presumably many hundreds of years passed before Lamech hit the scene. in Genesis 5 the Bible specifically calls out 130 years before Adam had Seth. The theory that was put forth in my own evangelical upbringing about this is that yeah there was a lot of inbreeding, but Adam and Eve’s genetic code was so perfectly made that none of these early generations suffered ill effects from inbreeding. Further evidence for this theory is that these folks lived prodigiously long lives, many of them pushing a millennium. Presumably, inbreeding slowly diluted our genetic stock and reduced us to the levels we know now (also, the fact human women were so hot that angels were coming down and siring Nephilim, so something had to give). It’s also important to remember that regardless of who else might have been around besides Adam and Eve, when God brought the flood he killed “every creature that has the breath of life in it” besides those aboard the Ark, which is Noah and his sons and their wives. So there definitely, absolutely had to be first cousin inbreeding after that, which isn’t so bad as all of Adam and Eve’s children getting funky with each other but is still a tall order for rebuilding the human population (and the population of every animal species, restored from a single breeding pair). ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/18 "2022-03-26T21:08:58Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > My issue with this assumption would be that it means that God then created new humans who were guilty of original sin, despite being directly created by God. This seems, well, even more unfair than most traditional interpretations of that concept. I’d like to point out (to the thread in general) that Genesis is in the Hebrew Bible, and that there is no concept of “original sin” in Judaism. Many of the “problems” that people have with the Genesis story (although not all, by any means) stem from trying to put a Christian gloss on mythology that originated at least a millennium and a half before the emergence of Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/19 "2022-03-26T21:13:40Z")
It seems like the OP should re-read Genesis. ---
**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2022, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745/20 "2022-03-26T21:15:44Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > But thinking it over, Genesis doesn’t say that Adam and Eve were the only people God ever created, just that they were the first. > … > this much-mocked passage in Genesis is much more defensible than I had thought. Not really. The bible doesn’t say much about any particular thing, so once you get into the bible doesn’t specifically say that justifications, any damn fool thing can be defensible. The bible doesn’t say anything, for instance, about dinosaurs. So the idea that humans rode around on Jesus Horses is defensible. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-defense-of-genesis/961745.md?page=2)