Was Adam a caveman? Was Eve a cavewoman?

[Enoch07]

He may not be able to understand the specifics, but talking about puppet dramas or theater dramas and explaining tv as a kind of animated cave painting or something would at least get him in the ballpark of what a tv is.

Explaining what a tv is, and the science of how it works are 2 separate things. In my post I did specify the science behind the tv. Here:

Its like explaining how a tv works to a bronze age man. He is just probably never going to be able to understand the science behind it.

And yet we don't have a rule noted that killing is wrong. Cain is getting punished for a rule being invented after the fact.

So murdering a person is moral, unless it was told to us by God that it is immoral?

Would you like to re-evaluate your logic before every atheist on this website turns on you?

Because what you are inadvertently implying is that you can't have morals without being taught them, by God no less! Are you sure your not a Christian fundamentalist in disguise?

 

[ChristineM]

How does a person fit prehistoric man into Christianity?

Where there any references anywhere made for Neathandrals and Cro-Magnon humans?

Where i live there are thousands of cro magnon references (one of several reasons i moved here), only problem they are kind of difficult to put in a pocket book.

Also note, cro magnon lived 20 to 30 thousand years before Jesus was even a twinkle in Panteras eye. And Neanderthal before that.

 

[Deeje]

Their fossilized remains are still around to tell their story. More specifically, their "dismembered" fossilized remains that have been scattered by animals not long after dying. A skull here, the arm over there, the foot and a toe out yonder by the tree

Actually the fossils have no voice apart from the one scientists give them. It appears as if these scientists are great ventriloquists. When you have theory to support.....you can make them say anything you like.

Rock shafts in Spain were also a convenient way to dispose of thousands of dead bodies belonging to groups of families as they aged out and passed away. And for even more primitive behavior - did I mention the widespread practice of cannibalism? Oh yes. It was a worldwide phenomenon that was practiced by a significant number of primitive groups on all continents and many Pacific Islands.

10 extraordinary burial ceremonies from around the world - Matador Network

I do not believe that humans progressed.....I believed that they regressed in many ways....morally, spiritually and culturally. Their burial customs reflect the religious beliefs that they adopted in their chosen localities. Caves were often used as burial sites.

The catacombs are full of bones.

When Moses began crafting his Genesis story, the only available sources for him were oral stories carried by neighboring cultures who had developed a standard language and systematic writing - developments that were only possible after the discovery of agriculture which allowed a sedentary lifestyle in place of the previously nomadic one. This is why his Genesis begins at the dawn of agriculture - Adam being created to farm the Garden in Genesis 2:15 and their direct sons Cain and Abel were skilled farmers and ranchers in Genesis 4:2.

We believe that Moses (and all the Bible writers) wrote everything under inspiration from the Creator. Hence he did not need written information from any other source, although there is nothing to say that Noah did not create a written record of what happened before, during and after the flood. The details of the flood are too specific to be myth.

The Bible also has information that was only backed up by science relatively recently.

The hygiene laws given to Israel for example. Washing hands before eating a meal. Quarantining in the case of communicable disease like leprosy and washing hands and garments and anything that touched dead bodies. Not eating certain types of meat that when under cooked could cause disease.
Only in the last couple of centuries have there been proof of the validity of these laws....yet these measures were implemented thousands of years ago. They didn't know why, but we do.

In the book of Job it is stated that the Earth 'hangs on nothing'. (Job 26:7) How could an ancient man with no knowledge of astronomy know that the earth is suspended in space? That was not how a lot of the ancients saw things.

Isaiah also said that the earth was a circle, using a word in Hebrew that also means "sphere". (Isaiah 40:22) How did he know that when the shape of the earth is only fully observable from space?

The two million years of human activity before this point - is entirely missing from his story of creation.

The two million years are science's assumption. There is no accurate way to tell how long humans have been here, but it is certainly a lot less than primates. We don't believe that primates are' humans-in-waiting'. We believe that humans were formed last as a completely separate creation to primates, who may resemble us in some respects, but the gulf between us, I believe is unbridgeable in so many ways.

 

[Faithofchristian]

It has all the tropes of fiction. Does it have to specify it to satisfy you?


He may not be able to understand the specifics, but talking about puppet dramas or theater dramas and explaining tv as a kind of animated cave painting or something would at least get him in the ballpark of what a tv is.


And yet we don't have a rule noted that killing is wrong. Cain is getting punished for a rule being invented after the fact.
Seeing you have no knowledge or understanding about the law of God.

If you had read in Genesis 4:13--"And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear"

Note the word ( punishment ) this being Translated in Hebrew means ( iniquity )
Which ( iniquity ) means ( lawlessness )
Therefore Cain admitted that he is lawlessness. Which means the law of God's was there. God's law is eternal.


Yes, maybe our movies and shows and stuff are actually representations of real universes and "storytellers" are just psychics who can detect these multiverses.


Isn't history just when we started writing down what happened? Before writing, it's "pre-history."


And wouldn't a temporally isolated place on earth just be flung off the planet because the earth is moving at a different rate than the area?


Indeed: Kids, eating fruit will turn you into gods.

 

[Thief]

I

And wouldn't a temporally isolated place on earth just be flung off the planet because the earth is moving at a different rate than the area?

.

(I don't believe time is a force or substance) sooooooo.

yes, the differential of motion.....would put the garden into chaos
maybe not into space
but firmly into chaos


oh!......it turned out that way!.....anyhow!

 

[Randy the Atheist]

We believe that Moses (and all the Bible writers) wrote everything under inspiration from the Creator.

Ecc 1:5 demonstrates that the bible writers did not receive any information from a source beyond their own imagination.

Hence he did not need written information from any other source, although there is nothing to say that Noah did not create a written record of what happened before, during and after the flood. The details of the flood are too specific to be myth.

The last global mass extinction of life occurred 65 million years ago which ended the dinosaur reign. There have been no major mass extinctions of that scale since then. Noahs flood was a local flood. On the other side of the world, the Chinese were busy developing their rice selections while their silk industry goes viral. Their unbroken record of progress from prehistoric man to the Ming Dynasty is recorded everywhere.

The hygiene laws given to Israel for example. Washing hands before eating a meal. Quarantining in the case of communicable disease like leprosy and washing hands and garments and anything that touched dead bodies.

The Jews did not originally wash their hands in order to be clean for eating. Their original handwashing ritual was done before entering the temple to perform sacrifices so that no spiritual impurity would touch the meat or blood that was sacrificed to god. Hence, the washing of hands was a ritual to wash away sins - not bacteria and viruses.

It later became a ritual hand washing called a chabam (or something like that) where you recite a specific prayer while dribbling a small amount of water over your hands three times if you're going to consume a certain amount of bread. Anything less than that specific amount of bread and you don't need to do it. Handwashing was NOT done in order to remove bacteria and viruses. The ancient people didn't even know what bacteria and viruses were. And we know this because after you do the chabam to eat a meal, you are not required to do it again if you touch a door knob to let family or guests into the house or shake a person's hand. You only need to do it again if you touch an armpit or a groin, a dead animal or insect, shoes, the scalp of your head, and the inside of the nose or ear.

In the 21st century, we know that doorknobs and handshakes are the primary methods of pathogenic transmission. The fact that chabam didn't cover that vector of infection is proof that it wasn't for bacteria and viruses. If god was real and wanted to protect Jews from pathogens, he would have given them antibacterial soap. And not regular soap either since regular soap only helps to removes oily fat based contaminants that repels water. Once the surfactancy of regular soap has done all it can to remove loose and fat based pathogens, it doesn't do anything beyond that. Regular soap does not have biocidal effects that antibacterial soap has which helps to eliminate all pathogens that survived the regular soap washing.

Lastly, the Jewish hand washing ritual does not involve scrubbing vigorously. To even approach the effectiveness of regular soap washing, using water only requires a vigorous amount of scrubbing and a helluva lot more water.

Video of Jewish hand washing ritual:

 

[Randy the Atheist]

In the book of Job it is stated that the Earth 'hangs on nothing'. (Job 26:7) How could an ancient man with no knowledge of astronomy know that the earth is suspended in space? That was not how a lot of the ancients saw things.

Thats because Job thinks the Earth is fixed on giant pillars instead. See Job 9:6. Psalms also mentions Earth's pillars shaking.

Isaiah also said that the earth was a circle, using a word in Hebrew that also means "sphere". (Isaiah 40:22) How did he know that when the shape of the earth is only fully observable from space?

Isaiah is describing a two dimensional circle. And we know this because 20 chapters earlier, he uses a different word to describe a sphere. Furthermore, Prov 8:27 uses the same word as Isaiah's "circle" to describe the horizon.

The two million years are science's assumption. There is no accurate way to tell how long humans have been here

Radioactive decay is caused by the constant jiggling of protons and neutrons which are in turn caused by random virtual particles popping into and out of existence from a quantum phenomena known as the Casimir Effect that was proven in 2001.

This rate of decay is a constant when measured in large quantities and can be used to date objects through deep time by comparing how much of the original isotope has decayed into a daughter isotope. For age of fossils, dating is done by measuring uranium-lead decay in the mineral zircon which is abundant in many types of rocks. We know that there is no way to greatly affect the rate of decay for radioactive isotopes. We have tested them against extreme heat, cold, combustion, corrosion, abrasion, disintegration and pressurization. Lastly, we have also tested them against time. In 1987, a supernova approximately 170,000 light years away released a tremendous amount of data recorded on film and graph and so far since its explosion, its decay rates correspond to the decay rates as they are today. Thus, we know that decay rates were the same 170,000 years ago.

In 2006, a supernova 400 million light years away burst open on film and graph and its isotope decay rates also corresponds to decay rates as they were 170,000 years ago as well as today's rates which means that radiometric decay rates have been the same 400 million years ago as well.

As a retired anthropologist who has excavated a significant number of archaeological sites over 35 years, I have gotten pretty good at a dating technique called spot dating which is a rough estimate based on surrounding objects. The first thing I would look for is pottery sherds. From these sherds, I could easily tell the rough age of a site just based on the quality of the sherd, whether it was wheel-thrown, highly burnished, well-fired etc etc. Basically, the skill level and technology employed in the artifacts will give you a fairly accurate date.

Dating things through deep time like dinosaurs however, requires a lab with soil core samples. Basically its a vertical sample of the soil between two undisturbed volcanic ash layers where a date range is given above and below your fossil. After a while, you'll become familiar with the age of a fossil by simply identifying the species as they tend to appear in very specific strata (except for species that survived multiple ages like the cockroach who appears in all strata). These key fossils that you become familiar with are called Index Fossils and can be used to perform a spot date similar to how I rough date with pottery sherds. This ordered strata is what we call Fossil Succession Layers which, when put together across a wide region of the Earth, creates what is known as the Geologic Column. This uniform succession of fossils was first identified by a surveyor named Smith who noticed this predictable fossil sequence all across Europe back in 1800.

In the lab, nuclear scientists look for minerals such as the aforementioned zircon which is abundant in volcanic lava/ash layers and often contains well preserved amounts of uranium which decays slowly over long periods of time into lead. By measuring the ratio of uranium to lead, you can get an accurate estimate of the mineral's age out to about 5 billion years. They also look for potassium which decays into argon as a doublecheck. The simple fact that we find decayed lead already indicates that millions of years have passed.

 

[metis]

We believe that Moses (and all the Bible writers) wrote everything under inspiration from the Creator.

And why do you believe as such? IOW, what is your source that clearly indicates this?

The two million years are science's assumption.

The reality is that it's well over two million.

 

[DanielR]

Oh and now suddenly the OT is a Christian scripture?

 

[Muffled]

What mark?

I believe there is a caste mark. You couldn't miss it.

 

[Muffled]

You cannot determine the amount of time that passed since Eden or the amount of time Adam and Eve were present in Eden. Remember God walked with Adam and Eve in Eden. God exist outside of time, so one day with God in Eden is many many thousands of years outside the boundaries of Eden. The amount of time Adam and Eve spent in Eden, lets say 10 years, was 10's if not 100's of thousands of years to beings outside of Eden. The bible, Torah, whatevs, does not give enough info to be able to calculate these numbers. Simply adding up lifespans of prominent figures, at best, can only take you back to when Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden, which maybe 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, but Eh /shrug. There is not enough info to determine how much time was spent in Eden, because Genesis does not specify how many "days" they walked with the Lord in Eden before being tempted.

I believe we can get in the ballpark from Norse myths. According to Norse myth Odin created man and the best estimate of when He came to earth is 10,000 BC. So it wouldn't be any earlier than that. Considering that the gods already knew how to provide eternal life then it is not a stretch to believe they could provide Adam and Eve with that and no doubt they could also remove it. So it is true that eternal life means that Adam and Eve could have been in the garden for thousands of years before being cast out.

 

[Muffled]

All that is based on assumptions. It is speculative and very subjective.

The only source to the Genesis - other than those in the Oral Torah (eg transmission to the rabbinic texts, like Talmud, Midrash) and that of works from the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library - 5:3-5, only give his ages, when he became father of Seth and when he died.

All you are doing is projecting the simile of "one day is like a thousand years..." as if it were literal.

This "like a thousand years" doesn't mean "equal to a thousand years". It is a simile, a literary device, where you compare something to something else, by using word "like". It is never meant to be literal. Simile is similar to a metaphor, where the comparisons of something to something completely different, is only symbolic or metaphoric.

So if write something like "Usain Bolt run as swift like the wind", it doesn't mean he is the "wind". Often a person is compared to some sort of animals, when using simile. So if I changed this same sentence, slightly, eg "Usain Bolt run as fast like the cheetah", it doesn't mean that Bolt is really a cheetah.

You are taking the whole "one day is like a thousand years" from one text, and trying to twist the meaning of another text. This is really a dishonest tactics, that I often seen being used by theists, and more frequently among creationists.

I believe when I have eternal life I won't bother to count years. So it is not inconceivable that Adam would start counting from the time of his expulsion.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

How does a person fit prehistoric man into Christianity?

Where there any references anywhere made for Neathandrals and Cro-Magnon humans?

Of course not. The people that wrote that stuff had no idea about prehistory, as they had not the science to discover it.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

No I am not taking it literal. "One day with the Lord is like a thousand years with man" is just way of conveying that the Lord operates outside of time.

That isn't how I read it. One day is still a literal day, but the experience of being with Mr.Omnimax is so profound and awe inspiring that it seems like a thousand years, due to you being so dumbfounded by his very presence.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Oh and now suddenly the OT is a Christian scripture?

It seems a good portion of the OT is made up by Christians and subsequently tacked on to the Hebrew Bible. That explains a lot of things now.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

So murdering a person is moral, unless it was told to us by God that it is immoral?

I'm just saying that ex post facto laws are a problem no matter what century it's in. I'm not saying what Cain did was moral, but it's unfair to punish someone when You weren't bright enough to tell them not to. In Genesis, God seems to have a running theme of being shocked that He actually has to do some "parenting" and teach the kids some stuff. It reflects poorly, is all.

Would you like to re-evaluate your logic before every atheist on this website turns on you?

I'm thinking about possible legal arguments if it happened today. We "know" pedophilia is wrong and yet some states allow minors to get married. We "know" robbing from the poor is wrong and we practically celebrate laws passed to do just that. We "know" everyone is created equally and yet even now, over 200 years since this country was founded, we're STILL arguing that people should have rights. Did Cain did murder? Was it manslaughter? Does he understand what happens when you bash someone in the head with a rock (I've seen youtube videos of people doing things that will most definitely lead to death at some point, but they are considered "funny" videos)?

Because what you are inadvertently implying is that you can't have morals without being taught them, by God no less! Are you sure your not a Christian fundamentalist in disguise?

I don't care whether God brought it up or not. I'm talking about not setting the stage to the story correctly. Laws aren't invented until centuries later than this story. God just threatens and attempts global genocide when we don't even know what crimes were committed other than "yo, they were evil". Do you find it moral to kill off tons of people for unverifiable crimes without due process?

Actually the fossils have no voice apart from the one scientists give them.

You're telling me that if you saw a bone with giant teeth sticking out of it, you would claim it's just a baseless assumption the owner of the bone was chewed on?

We believe that Moses (and all the Bible writers) wrote everything under inspiration from the Creator.

But the Creator is ignorant of the facts and this shows throughout all the texts.

The details of the flood are too specific to be myth.

What specifics? "MMMM ... big'un flood ... dead people ... live animals ... boat."

The hygiene laws given to Israel for example. Washing hands before eating a meal. Quarantining in the case of communicable disease like leprosy and washing hands and garments and anything that touched dead bodies.

Or they could've pulled the hygiene laws from Egypt, which had centuries if not millennia of understanding what a bath was.

How could an ancient man with no knowledge of astronomy know that the earth is suspended in space?

They saw no ropes holding the land "up". However, they also thought the sky was a solid dome.

Isaiah also said that the earth was a circle, using a word in Hebrew that also means "sphere". (Isaiah 40:22) How did he know that when the shape of the earth is only fully observable from space?

Maybe he asked Greeks and Egyptians, who were studying such things?

There is no accurate way to tell how long humans have been here, but it is certainly a lot less than primates. We don't believe that primates are' humans-in-waiting'.

You are a primate. That is your biological classification. You are not a tree, a mushroom, a bacterium, or a jellyfish. I just don't get why being a primate is such an issue. Doesn't God love even the sparrows and the flowers?

To faithofchristian:

Which means the law of God's was there. God's law is eternal.

No, it's not. We like to think our laws are eternal too, but it turns out it's not there until it's made official.

The last global mass extinction of life occurred 65 million years ago which ended the dinosaur reign. There have been no major mass extinctions of that scale since then. Noahs flood was a local flood. On the other side of the world, the Chinese were busy developing their rice selections while their silk industry goes viral. Their unbroken record of progress from prehistoric man to the Ming Dynasty is recorded everywhere.

Silly, only some uneducated hicks in the Middle East count as worthy opinions on facts. The elderly civilizations who had actually studied don't count.

The Jews did not originally wash their hands in order to be clean for eating. Their original handwashing ritual was done before entering the temple to perform sacrifices so that no spiritual impurity would touch the meat or blood that was sacrificed to god. Hence, the washing of hands was a ritual to wash away sins - not bacteria and viruses.

Plus, washing your hands to avoid infection means nothing when you spray the room in blood.

 

[Enoch07]

I'm just saying that ex post facto laws are a problem no matter what century it's in. I'm not saying what Cain did was moral, but it's unfair to punish someone when You weren't bright enough to tell them not to.

God wasn't bright enough to tell them murder was wrong but since Cain was not bright enough to know murder was wrong, he should not be held accountable.

Why does that not surprise me. Its always someone else's fault. No sense of culpability at all.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I know....look at Coober Pedy......

Above ground....

Below ground.....

Very nice.

I'd be happy living there. :0)

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Why does that not surprise me. Its always someone else's fault. No sense of culpability at all.

You're saying God shouldn't take responsibility, though, so pot-kettle. How come we have to be but He doesn't?

 

[gnostic]

I believe when I have eternal life I won't bother to count years. So it is not inconceivable that Adam would start counting from the time of his expulsion.

Except that Adam never had eternal life, BECAUSE he was never made immortal AND he had never eaten fruit from the Tree of Life:

22 Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—

Adam could only live forever, if he had eaten from the Tree of Life. Instead they ate from Tree of Knowledge.

Let’s say for a moment that there are 3 possibilities:

1. If they had eaten from the Tree of Life, then outcome they would have live forever.
2. We already know the outcome from eating from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 3), because he would eventually die, as seen in Genesis 5:5.
3. And the 3rd possibility is not eating from either Trees (so both Life and Knowledge), the outcome for Adam would still die, perhaps even at the same age as verse 5:5.

The only differences between dying for (2) having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and (3) dying for not eating from the Tree of Knowledge, is that if point 3 happened, they wouldn’t need to suffer.

No where in Genesis 2 & 3, did it ever say that god made them to live forever. They would only live forever, if Adam and Eve have eaten from the Tree of Life at the beginning, instead of from the Tree of Knowledge.

If they didn’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they would still die, but Eve wouldn’t need to suffer any pain when she’d give birth, and Adam would die but without suffering or pain.