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Adam and Eve and their children? Who did they mate with?

As usual, my views will run askew the majority of the Christian population.

This is the problem I've always had with to literal interpretations of the Bible. From my interpritation, Adam is mankind not just a single man. When God threw man out of the Garden of Eden he banished "man-kind". Any other interpritation runs into all sorts of logic problems. Beyond the "where did Cain and Abel get their wives" there's also Cain's fear of being killed for wearing the Mark of Cain. Who exactly would he be afraid of? He just murdered the only other grown man of his generation, right? Even if Adam and Evan had 20 children he would still have no problem avoiding that few people in this whole wide world. Very obviously a full-blown society must have already existed in the second generation which means that the first generation must have consisted of many men and women.

As for the cousins argument, if Adam and Eve were indeed one man and one woman then their wouldn't be any cousins until the third generation.

edit: OK, technically there would be one other grown man. Forgot about Seth.
 
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Well obviously not begin a Christian personally the recitation of a literalism view of genesis is at least as crazy as the time I took magic mushrooms.

But at least is makes sense within itself.

Inbreeding is a problem in normal species because you end up 'purifying' a genomes traits and eliminating the heterozygous alleials in favor of the homozygous ones and also functionally results in a loss of data in the form of these varied gene types this results in an individual who's phenotype is extremely and closely related MHC classes.

So for example in simple terms. You personally are a "carrier" for a number of severe and extremely rare genetic diseases Say (Niemann-Pick disease a disease that makes you senile before the age of 14). Your a carrier but you don't suffer from this illness because you only carry *1* disease allele if you carried *2* you would develop the illness.
Carrier
| |
| |
n N
| |

Afflicted
| |
| |
n n
| |

If you mated with a member of your family then your MUCH more likely to be breeding with someone who is also a carrier. As such their is a risk that your offspring would be afflicted with the disease.

But assume for sake of argument that god created Adam and Eve to be nearly perfect downto the single base pair, one could presume that they would be the archetype of the "perfect human" genetically. As such they wouldn't be carriers for any recessive genetic illnesses as such for the first 100 or so of the human generations there wouldn't be any genetic illness TO catch inside the population.
As such ignoring the unpleasant Weistermark effect, there wouldn't be any adverse repercussions for such a grossly inbred species.
 
put two rabbits in a field with everything that they need for an easy life and go away for a hundred years.... It happens, and all you need for a mouse infestation is a single pregnant mouse in a building the offspring will sort themselves out
 
ivorhughjarse said:
put two rabbits in a field with everything that they need for an easy life and go away for a hundred years.... It happens, and all you need for a mouse infestation is a single pregnant mouse in a building the offspring will sort themselves out
Click to expand...
Errm perhaps not. You can't just mass produce a species by back-crossing it causes severe problems with the immune system. I will explain why.

question.
Why bother with sexual reproduction at all? all number of worm species and fish species exist which don't bother... They are hermaphrodites, and they have sex with themselves and make more copies of themselves.

The answer is evolution.
We are all different I'm different from you and so fought this isn't just in appearance but even down to our immune systems they behave differently this is why we have problems with tissue matching when transplanting organs. The immune system of the host doesn't recognize the different tissue even if it's functionally the same as the lost organ.

As such when I get infected with a virus my body will behave in a unique way. As would your body. This is due to the HLA & MHC genes, which are highly diverse in humans.

If however you keep crossing back with a common ancestor in reproduction this diversity is rapidly eliminated and data is deleted from the gene pool. As a result the ENTIRE populations immune system will be compromised as of credit of "behaving" the same way.

This is the testament of what Victorian misconceptions like yours have left certain species.

Cheetahs were extremely endangered even in the 1900's to make more they would inbreed two cheetahs into a population back crossing the offspring with the parent.
These animals were then released into the wild.

Nearly all of them died out within a few generations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_infectious_peritonitis

This virus had emerged from a rare disease effecting 1-5% to wiping out over 40% of their population.
BECAUSE they were all inbred and the original progenitor was vulnerable to this illness thus all of the subsequent offspring were equally vulnerable. however had they been outbred then the additional genetic information would most likely have protected them.
 
Pebbles said:
But assume for sake of argument that god created Adam and Eve to be nearly perfect downto the single base pair, one could presume that they would be the archetype of the "perfect human" genetically. As such they wouldn't be carriers for any recessive genetic illnesses as such for the first 100 or so of the human generations there wouldn't be any genetic illness TO catch inside the population.
As such ignoring the unpleasant Weistermark effect, there wouldn't be any adverse repercussions for such a grossly inbred species.
Click to expand...

Interesting... And if this were the case, what do you believe the life expectancy would be for said individuals?

Pebbles said:
question.
Why bother with sexual reproduction at all? all number of worm species and fish species exist which don't bother... They are hermaphrodites, and they have sex with themselves and make more copies of themselves.

The answer is evolution.
We are all different I'm different from you and so fought this isn't just in appearance but even down to our immune systems they behave differently this is why we have problems with tissue matching when transplanting organs. The immune system of the host doesn't recognize the different tissue even if it's functionally the same as the lost organ.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure I'd label it evolution.

We see this within the genetic diversity pool. We have become masters at this pool when it comes to our food supply and we did this in Africa where we sold specific seed to a specific area and by reducing the natural genetic diversity of a plant, it became dependent upon a particular environment to survive. In the particular instance, the developers of the seed took out the plants genetic attribute which helped it to survive natively within that environment. Why? So they could sell pesticides of course. In America, were seeing a rise in Glucose related issues. Ironically glucose related issues have risen as our wheat fields went from producing 80 bushels an acre to now upwards of 140 bushels per acre which was made possible by genetic engineering. That is, take this attribute out of the plant so it can spend that energy on "this" attribute and we'll suppliment with chemicals as needed. BTW, our corn and wheat and beans are are now engineered "Sterile" and are unable to reproduce.

Ironically, we saw our first human outbreak where people could die from a common cold in that same area as they suddenly had an auto immune deficiency. They called it AIDS.

We know that we adapt to our surroundings. I don't know I'd call that evolving. But when we perfect our environment and our environment changes, we are negatively susceptible to those changes. We see this clearly when the English came to America and the Native Americans started dying off from disease that the English could survive without issue. Breed an Indian with an English, and no more problem... Funny how that works huh?
 
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DelMarXtreme said:
:chin Besides with each other?
Click to expand...

As God's first humans, they were genetically perfect. Sin began the degradation of our gene pool. Inbreeding wasnt outlawed until leviticus when it became hazardous to health.
Genesis takes place over hundreds of years, its not a few weeks. Think of it as snapshots of important events. Adam and Eve had lots of offspring in their hundreds of years.
 
Genesis 4:16-24 is the ungodly line of Cain and Genesis 4:25 through all of Chapter 5 is the Godly line of Seth. God had to establish it to be brother and sister marrying and reproducing in order to replenish the earth up until the time when God made an end of close relatives to marry as it became nothing more than sexual sin as each man fell to the imaginations of their minds to lust after different idols and became Godless in all their ways, Leviticus 18.

You really have to read from Genesis up to Leviticus chapter 18 to understand the whole of the question that was asked in the OP and why God separated man into different countries who developed their own cultures. It's a long study, but well worth the effort you put into it.
 
Things were different then. People lived longer.

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat [a son] in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. - (Gen 5:3-5 KJV)



The "problem" we imagine comes when we look at that time with standards that are needed for our time.
 
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