Do You Believe in Adam and Eve?

[Willamena]

I suppose that's my view, so I guess it has to be acceptable.

Good luck with that guess.

 

[Salvador]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

"Human genetic diversity is too great for there to have ever been a human population size that consisted of much less than ca. 10,000 individuals. Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (PSMC) analysis confirms a population bottleneck in humans that consisted of no fewer than probably ca. 10,000 individuals. (Li, Heng and Durbin, Richard ) "Inference of Human Population History from Individual Whole-Genome Sequences" Nature International Weekly Journal of Science 28 July 2001 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v47...10231.html

If there were the most severe population bottlenecking such as one breeding pair that is portrayed in the case of the Biblical Adam and Eve, then there would be a maximum of 4 alleles passed on by Adam and Eve to their children. Furthermore, the subsequent inbreeding would cause some loss of alleles due to genetic drifting. There would not have been genetic diversity in the small group of Adam, Eve and their children who would've had to commit incest among each other for the procreation of their inbred children. A lack of genetic diversity would have persisted for thousands of generations until genetic mutations could cause the genetic diversity of today's population. Based on the number of different alleles there are for the number of genes within the current population and the known rate of mutations per nucleotide sites in humans, geneticists can calculate the minimum number of people needed to create the current amount of genetic diversity. Numerous genetic studies suggest that there were several thousands of people more than two people during the most severe population bottleneck which ever occurred in human history.

DNA segments (Alu repeats ) insert themselves at various chromosomal locations. There are various forms of Alu sequences and several thousand families of Alu. One well-studied family of Alu is called Ya5, which has been inserted into human chromosomes at 57 mapped locations. If we were to have descended from a single pair of ancestors such as Adam and Eve, then we all would have each of the 57 elements inserted at the same location points of our chromosomes. "However, the human population consists of groups of people who share some insertion points but not others. The multiple shared categories make it clear that although a human population bottleneck occurred, it was definitely never as small as two. In fact, this line of evidence also indicates that there were at least several thousand people when the population was at its smallest". ( Venema, Dennis and Falk, Darrel ) " Does genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple?" 5 April 2001 http://biologos.org/blog/does-genetics-p...mal-couple
Coalescent theory analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism and linkage disequilibrium indicates the mean effective population size for hominid lineage is 100,000 individuals over the course of the last 30 million years. "The effective population size estimated from linkage disequilibrium is a minimum of ca, 10,000 followed by an expansion in the last 20,000 years." ( Tenesa, Albert, Navarro, Paul, Hayes, Ben J., Duffy, David L., Clarke, Geraldine, Goodard, Mike E. and Visscher, Peter M. ) " Recent Human Effective Population Size Estimated from Linkage Disequilibrium" Genome Research 17 April 2007 Ancestral Population Genomics: The Coalescent Hidden Markov Model Approach

Indeed, there is ample genetic evidence that the Biblical Adam and Eve never actually existed."

Some thoughts about evolution vs creation debates Salvador, Post #7

 

[Willamena]

I believe the story of Adam and Eve had nothing to do with monkeys (or apes).

 

[Etritonakin]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

Scientific knowledge does not support the assumptions made about Adam and Eve.

Assumption 1 -Adam was the first humanoid on Earth.

Incorrect -as is all (assumption) which follows.

Is the following about the first instance of man -or the next stage of the plan for already-existent man?
Does development negate creativity -or does extremely-purposeful-development indicate creativity?

"LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE"

 

[Subduction Zone]

I believe the story of Adam and Eve had nothing to do with monkeys (or apes).

Really? Nothing to do with people then.

 

[Salvador]

Really? Nothing to do with people then.

Yes, humans are great apes, but this might offend some people. I personally find that this fact of humans being great apes be left unmentioned.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes, humans are great apes, but this might offend some people. I personally find that this fact of humans being great apes be left unmentioned.

I know. Some people are offended by reality.

 

[Willamena]

Really? Nothing to do with people then.

Everything to do with people.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Everything to do with people.

Aah, I was confused since people are apes.

 

[dfnj]

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.
Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.
Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

I generally dismiss science when it comes to God. The idea of Adam and Eve is very simple. Everyone on the planet is descendants of the same two mother and father at some point in history. At some point in time homo sapien came into existence for the very first time. At some point in history the first male homo sapien existed. At some point in history the first female homo sapien existed. And at some point the first male and female homo sapiens copulated and had kids for the first time.

If you don't like religion then switch the channel. But do not expect religion to square with scientific knowledge. The purpose of religion is to answer the following four great existential questions:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. What does it all mean?
4. What is going to happen to me when I die?

Science sucks at answering the big questions about the meaning our lives. Science is good for making cell phones and cars. I like cell phones and cars. Science is not good with anything meaningful about our existence.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I generally dismiss science when it comes to God. The idea of Adam and Eve is very simple. Everyone on the planet is descendants of the same two mother and father at some point in history. At some point in time homo sapien came into existence for the very first time. At some point in history the first male homo sapien existed. At some point in history the first female homo sapien existed. And at some point the first male and female homo sapiens copulated and had kids for the first time.

If you don't like religion then switch the channel. But do not expect religion to square with scientific knowledge. The purpose of religion is to answer the following four great existential questions:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. What does it all mean?
4. What is going to happen to me when I die?

Science sucks at answering the big questions about the meaning our lives. Science is good for making cell phones and cars. I like cell phones and cars. Science is not good with anything meaningful about our existence.

Science is quite good with where we came from. The only hope that creationists have is to either be dishonest or keep themselves ignorant. Evolution does not refute the concept of a god, though a lot of creationists act as if it does. The arrogance of creationists always amazes me. They have the gall to tell their God how he made the Earth.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

Well, science does support a Y-chromosome Adam, and Mitochondrial Eve. However, they both lived 200,000 plus thousands of years ago, and they did not live at the same time.

The Genesis creation story #2 in Chapters 2-3 is the genre of myth. That does NOT make it a lie. A myth is the most powerful form of literature there is, because it teaches eternal truths while slipping in past conscious fliters. We don't read the Genesis creation accounts to find out history or scientific facts. We read the Genesis creation accounts to learn the eternal truths contained therein, like "God is Creator," "We are made in the image of God," "Creation is good," etc.

The story of Adam and Eve is very, very roughly true. The garden is our pre-sentient state, when we were at one with nature. We didn't have the responsibilities that we have now as human beings. But then, our moral sentience evolved -- we "ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Suddenly the harmony we had known in the garden was destroyed. We found that our animal instincts (our yetzer hara) were sometimes at odds with our conscience (our yetzer tov). This conflict is represented as being kicked out of the garden.

That, btw, is my personal take on it. I don't speak for anyone else.

 

[danieldemol]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

I don’t believe Adam and Eve existed.

To me it is a primitive idea about how man came to be reflecting the scientific ignorance of the time these stories were made up.

I believe in God because I am hardwired to do so, but don’t have any evidence for my belief in God.

 

[atanu]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

We understand, in light of Saankhya philosophy, the universe to be Purusha-Prakriti, Consciousness and Nature, Soul and Matter — Adam and Eve.

Readers may (or may not) wish to read the following.

- Savitri
......

Reference:
Samkhya - Wikipedia

 

[Nakosis]

Where do you get this "scientific knowledge" not supporting this.

Of course it does! There were first humans, after generations of non-human primates. Maybe they were called Gur and Ogg, but they were our original humans.

Which one was created from the rib of the other?

 

[PureX]

Careful, you are describing quite a few believers here (not that I disagree with you).

Well, a shovel is a shovel, and an idiot is an idiot. Every large group of humans has it's share of idiots. Some are that way by accident, while others are that way by choice. But either way, they are what they are.

If we have no idea about this truth then then I don't see much benefit of bringing it up. I'm just using a common dictionary definition, not something quite so existential.



Well let's see if I can rephrase it for you...

If you think that Adam and Eve existed as actual ancestors of man and also accept the TOE as the best explanation for how mankind came about, how do you reconcile to two beliefs?

Do you see the biblical story as allegory.
Or do you simply reject the TOE?

Who on Earth are you talking to? Who "believes in" both?

 

[Audie]

Who claimed otherwise?

Ignorance and cog dis square just fine with "philosophy".

 

[BilliardsBall]

Scientific knowledge does not support the existence of an Adam or an Eve.

So if you do believe Adam and Eve existed, how do you square that with scientific knowledge.

Or if you see it as an allegory, then why not see God as an allegory too? Just a story created by ancient man to convey moral ideas.

Or do you just dismiss scientific theory altogether?

Scientific knowledge does not support Adam and Eve? Are you thinking of mitochondrial Eve research? Or simple math and evolution, where only a few of a new species would propagate?

 

[Audie]

Well scientists are, however I suppose it's not really necessary for anyone else to concern themselves with science.

Absolutely. Our ancestors never worried about germs, and thought
mrrcury and radium were good medicine!

 

[Nakosis]

Scientific knowledge does not support Adam and Eve? Are you thinking of mitochondrial Eve research? Or simple math and evolution, where only a few of a new species would propagate?

I'm thinking the story of creation in the Bible.