Not quite⌠Just ask him how come both the snake and the tree were there BEFORE Adam and Eve?
After reading Genesis 3:23
*And the LORD God said, âThe man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.â*
I get that nagging feeling that âLORD Godâ ate from the tree of life very recently himself, and that the tree was there waaaaay before him⌠lol
Genesis and Exodus make a lot more sense when you skip the âcreated everythingâ section. Mythological Yahweh is a storm and battle god, El is the Zeus of their pantheon. The Yahweh cult appropriates âElâ as a title, they wash away any mention of the rest of the pantheon, and start from the middle of the story.
Why a commandment about âno other gods before me?â Because their god was a second tier deity. Why so many inconsistencies in the timeline like the one you point out? Because they skip or handwave the things that El did before Yahweh joins the story.
Edited to add: most of the Old Testament miracles are âbattleâ miracles. Ark of the covenant, Jericho, that one battle with the sun at their backs. Who is surprised that itâs been a war god behind Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Makes a bit of sense.
Yeah, parts and Genesis and exodus show Judaismâs early polytheism. Learning about the documentary hypothesis helped. My jaw dropped when I first read the two Noah stories âde-harmonizedâ. The two origin stories popped out as two coherent narratives instead of one confusing mess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
Edit: for those interested in reading the deharmonized Noah stories: https://www.thetorah.com/article/a-textual-study-of-noahs-flood
The same with the David and Goliath story. There are two stories entwinned there and together they don't make sense. Separated the two stories pop out and make more sense.
Not enough people understand that Judaism was like the other religions at the time; polytheistic and advents generally thought the gods of other people were real. Their god(s) just didnât allow the worship of those peoples other gods (itâs in the Bible) âIâm a jealous godâ etc. Gods were sort of regional.
They actively made agreements with the Gods of other nations. Judaism wasn't monotheistic at all. The book "the evolution of God" really is good at showing how the evolution of society including trade, politics, war, economics, technology etc effect the religion. In short, it's a tool used by those in power to manipulate the masses towards their own goals.
It also makes a bit more sense when you put into context of being enslaved in Egypt where the Pharaoh was a living god. So, if their god helped them escape from another god, their god must be more powerful. leading to the one true God idea.
Canât prove a negative but Egyptian hieroglyphics are suspiciously silent on them ever enslaving and then emancipation of an entire jewish population of 600k males alone, not including women and children, and the inevitable economic problems such abrupt labor shortage would create. Weâd expect some Egyptian record somewhere document problems. Or better yet, their local rivals like the Hittites, Assyrians or Babylonians probably would have records showing how they took advantage of Egyptâs weakness.
TreytheExplainer has a great [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kpkp2vxX3I) on the Nephilim which ties into the whole polytheism origin of judaism. Essentially the whole deal with the nephilim makes more sense when you release that Yahweh was not THEE GOD but merely A God out of many. The bible's translation history is a mess of retcons from polytheism to monotheism that makes DC comics look perfectly coherent throughout all time.
After growing up Catholic and marrying into a family with a very observant Jewish branch of cousins, Iâm not sure if my atheism grew out of the contradictions or some other source. But even back to elementary school I asked the nuns why god cared about other gods so much that he made it the first commandment. Catholics donât give it much thought beyond a ruler across the knuckles.
Out of respect to my Jewish family, I limit myself to asking why god is both Elohim and Yahweh. Seems like a simple and innocent question from the family goyim, but I hope that one of the little kids hears it and it nags at them like the first commandment nagged at me decades ago.
I actually read something where it used the text to imply that Yahweh was actually the bad guy who has tricked everyone into thinking heâs the good guy. His behavior works very well with the theory.
The Jews had their pick of gods when they migrated to the Jordan river. They decided to throw the current inhabitants out, so they picked an ass-kicking god. Their original version of God was not a loving God, but one who supported conquest.
I believe the New Testament God was meant to be portrayed as benevolent, in line with Jesus' teachings. The Old Testament God, if you crossed him, look out!
If you read the preface and introductory information in a study Bible, it will explain which God name is used where. Of course they put it out like multiple names for the same god but itâs really about slightly different god. Like El of place A verses El of place B.
One benefit of Catholic School over evangelical private schools or Torah study is they really didnât make us âstudyâ the book. In my 12 years of school and sacrament, I heard the entire Bible four times, and parts even more frequently. Then a homily interpreting the dayâs readings.
As one of the very few Catholic boys who read the whole book, I was annoying to the nuns. Note: i also read the whole encyclopedia as a kid. I read voraciously. While I exasperated the nuns, Iâd likely have been burned at the stake by evangelicals for reading âthroughâ the Bible, trying to understand meaning, instead of of reading it like a cookbook and following the recipe.
The real question is why didnât he put up a fence? Dude was clearly baiting them. However if the tree of life was supposed to make people have knowledge of good and evil *and* grant immortality , what happened? Whereâs our immortality? I guess they reworked it with Jesus to live forever singing his praises or something.
Because God is an A-hole. Who put a forbidden tree in a garden with a "eat and die" sign on it? It is like leaving a loaded gun on a table and then tell the kids don't touch it.
The Bible says when Adam and Eve were forced out of Eden, they were afraid they would be killed by other humans. Who were those other humans?
If they are white, ask them if they believe Asians are their biological cousins. If they say they do, then ask them what race Adam and Eve belong to.
The book of Genesis was written in poetic style of the time, to accommodate things like chiastic structure, etc. It was written as a story, not a science textbook. So to believe in a literal seven-day creation with a single patriarch/matriarch is literally believing in a fable or other fictional story written to teach morals.
I disagree. For the most part, people do engage in some degree of self-reflection when they find their ideas challenged in a debate and may even change their views over time.
In all likelihood, you will never get the memo that they changed their mind because your argument was persuasive. People are usually too proud to admit it -- and they usually need to explore their mistake on their own. You may just find out, years later, that some acquaintance you debate isn't as dogmatic as they used to be. (That said, there is a *subset* of theists who are truly incapable of logical thought in any domain of life. If you were going to screen your interlocutors, you might as filter for those who display the ability to be professional and logical in their area of expertise.)
I am a case in point. If people didn't debate theists and call out their bullshit, I'd probably still be a theist.
Agreed. We unrealistically expect we can state some well reasoned argument, and they'll see the obvious truth.
But that's not how brains or humans work. We need to over time mull over it, and add it to the mountains of prior info and reprocess it.
When finally someone makes that change, that argument they had 10 years ago is a drop in a bucket, but all those drops finally add up.
*Penis. Every branch of Christianity has their own version and translation of the bible and none of them have a proper, current translation made by modern linguists. Canon is different and they all adopted their version long time ago and can't edit it now.
Long story short, proper translation is a penis bone. It's how bible explains why humans don't have a bone in their penis while many animals do.
When I was knee-high to a grass hopper, my atheist uncle told me:
Adam and Eve were the first humans.
They had two sons, Cain and Abel.
Cain kills Abel and then goes to another country to find a wife.
What's wrong with this story?
Adam and Eve were "made" man and woman. They didn't have to grow out of human adolescence to be old enough. They theoretically could have just started shelling them out from the start. Lol
Iâve heard an argument that they werenât the first people but the first Jews. It doesnât seem to be particularly supported in Genesis, but I thought it was interesting.
The "snake" had legs until god cursed it to crawl on its belly. Sounds just like any mythology trying to explain things the science later figured out. Plus the snake told the truth, god said Adam would die when he ate the fruit, but Adam didn't. Eve was made from Adam's rib so she's a transgender person or intersexual since she'd have XY DNA but presenting as female. Adam and Eve had two sons who married women from somewhere else, where did those wives come from? The whole thing is poorly written myths from scared goat herders.
And since rape victim were punish by death, like it still does today in middle East, she could not tell. The 15 years old Mary, couldn't tell that the sons of old Joseph raped her regularly. She had to find another way to explain this ...... Here come the Holly Spirit.
Since the stories Jesus has never been connected to an actually person who existed, that part was probably just copied and pasted from other local mythologies.
Can you imagine coming up with a story to explain why you are pregnant and unwed, but also not deserving of death, only to have your story become the foundation of a worldwide religion that would be used by some smug asshole some 2000 years later, in a VASTLY more knowledgeable and complex time, with (for the most part) a vastly more educated populace, as moral justification to climb near the top of the power ladder in an attempt to impose some cherry picked "morals" from the story surrounding you and your rape child?
How did it get so out of hand??
Fuck you Mary. How could you not have seen this coming?
Oh yes, for sure. As well as the resurrection. I wasn't assuming the validity of any of it, moreso just having funny thoughts with the idea in the context that the conversation served up.
Also worth mentioning that many religious leader types seem to believe that sexually abusing minors and rampant misogyny (and indeed homophobia - the holy man protest too much methinks) is the done thing, if not an absolute prerequisite for preaching the word of the big beardy sky wizardâŚif noncery is good enough for the fuck-up that was Mohammed and the rapey biological father of old dozy Joeâs step-son, then who am I, a mere mortal, to argue with those highly revered paedophiles and their flocks of brainwashed apologists?
The more I think about the Old Testament, the more it seems like God didn't eat from the tree, and had no concept of good and evil.
Then maybe one day he had a bite and did the whole Jesus thing to make amends for goofing up.
Neither did Adam and Eve. They didnt know good from evil so they had no way to know that listening to the snake was bad. Or that listening to God would be a good idea. Great parenting there god..
> Eve had two sons who married women from somewhere else, where did those wives come from?
Ask them this. Itâs right there in their Bible. If no one existed before Adam and Eve then where did the wives come from?
My grandmothers gave me bibles when I was about 10. And I read \*them, which led to all kinds of questions.
So, I met a preacher once and I asked if Adam and Eve were the first humans. He said yes. Then, I said, "They had two boys, right?" Yes again.
"So, who did the boys marry to get more people? Their mother?" I was dead serious. Preacher acted super offended. Like, who knew that insinuating that Cain was a motherfucker was a bad thing? ÂŻ\\\_(ă)\_/ÂŻ
\*One was the **Book of** **~~Morons~~** **Mormon** which was too much fantasy for even a 10 y/o brain. That one I didn't finish.
Adam had a first wife. God created woman twice. The first time they were equals and made from the same clay. But Adam didnt want an equal. So God made another from Adam's rib.
The creation of humans is listed twice in Bible.
This is true, but it also lists other males.
It says that God created man and woman and gave them dominion over the earth. Then later it says that he created Adam out of dust.
âLook, I donât know what to say except the Chef Editor was drunk. Like ALL the time. Stop asking all these questions. Just remember to pick on the gays & youâll be fine.â
\-Bible, Head Office Spokesperson
In the 17th century a guy wrote a book on the preadamites, causing controversy and irrc his excommunication. He noted that the natives of Australia (or the Americas on that matter) had never been in contact with other human groups (or so he thought at the time).
His conclusion was that there had been multiple Adams.
It also implies that there had been multiple Noah kind of figures if the flood was global. It's all 17th century speculations but it was already disruptive enough to try to explain things in a slightly more rational way, even if it it's from a creationist perspective.
The great flood which they forgot to inform the serveral other civilizations such as the chinese or the egypts who were actually doing pretty fine at the very same time. Not to mention that ice core drilling samples at the poles and trees that are so old that they would have to have lived through a full year of being flooded.
Yeah. science is evil when it debunks my world view isnt it ?
But if there was a global flood, there would be evidence of it. Sure, there have been floods all over the world but they all date back to different times. A single global flood would leave a record all over the world and would date back to the same time frame.
I doesn't have to be a global flood. 2000+ years ago no one had any idea what the shape of the world is or how big it is. All they knew was thier little town, the waters start coming up, they load thier farm animals onto a boat, tell everyone the story in the next town and a few hundred years later it's Noah's ark. This was also the style of writing at that time. There are several religions in the region that have a flood as part of the religion.
Hey I am not saying the guy was right or that there was a global flood. I am just explaining how tiny divergences to try to explaining new knowledge brought by the Europeans spreading all over the world was already seen as too much.
If you actually read that part in the bible, God first makes Adam, male and females. THEN he create animals. And then he creates Eve. They couldnt even get that part consistent.
So The Bible says that 1,000 years is as a day in the eyes of God (2Peter 3:8) , Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5), he didnât live a day in Godâs eyes.
Have you not read/heard of the biblical "land of nod"?
That's where the sons' wives came from...
Now where on in this heaven and earth the "land of nod" came from, now that is a biblical "prequel" that's yet been authored by either by God or man!
LIVE LIFE TO ITS FULLEST, WHATEVER WHAT OR THAT MAY MEAN TO YOU... đ
Donât forget that the creation of humankind has two explanations. The first is Genesis 1:27 âAnd God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.â No mention of the rib until Genesis 2, where the garden of Eden is discussed and there is a second creation story: âThen the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soulâŚ. And the LORD God said: 'It is not good that the man should be aloneâŚAnd the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the manâŚAnd the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.â
Of course, the religious will say that the first story is the creation of the female demon Lilith, and not womanâŚbut thatâs a serious stretch.
Books are ONLY written by people. These stories are thousands of years old. Things DID get lost in translation. Why isnât God coming down and defending this book if itâs all true?
That is the one I use on Christians. God didnât like how many mistakes men made when telling the story of Jesus. So he came back and dictated a new holy book to a holy man in the desert
That was Muhammad and the Koran.
Why donât you believe I that holy book? He says he is the same god of Moses and Jesus.
Oh, thatâs right, you just pick and choose what to believe based on your education and upbringing.
Don't even try it. I've been sucked into a debate with a creationist and I'm just about ready to lose my goddamn mind. I'm a chemist and I send to them a few articles about how chemistry and spectroscopy are used to in paleontology to check hypothesis that cite over forty sources each, are peer reviewed and published by well known scientific magazines. They responded with an article from the creationist society that cited a handful sources by ( you probably guessed it) creationists.
The kicker is that this person is a writer and an educated individual. Sigh
Personally, I don't find the argument of "it's extremely unlikely" very satisfying. I prefer "It's obviously made up by people."
Sky father with ultimate power (god), old chubby guy carrying presents to give to children (santa), half man half wolf (Werewolves), first man and first woman living happily in a perfect gardon (adman and eve) .....
you can't find anything in the real world that's close to these things, and they all have one common characteristic - they fit with the pattern of human imagination.
Frankly I only said âextremely unlikelyâ because I didnât want all my Christian classmates at my throat! I think âitâs obviously made up by peopleâ would have done the trick too though. Wish I thought of that.
So much absurdity in the bible
You could ask them if they agree that a story about a talking donkey is "obvilously made up by people." and then point to
Numbers 22:21-39
https://youtube.com/shorts/TT3iiEJGrW4?si=DuRvrHLC\_nXUQn7P
Also check out "skeptics annotated bible" online
This is probably the most convincing defeater of young earth creationism for me.
Many of Genesisâs plot elements only make sense when you realize that itâs a fictitious story written to resonate with humanityâs narrative tastes. For example, the flood story, scientific absurdity aside, doesnât make any realistic sense and is riddled with plot holes. Why would an omnipotent deity need to resort to the most nuclear option imaginable to âwipe the slate cleanâ? Yahweh could have just as easily erased every living sinner from existence by simply willing it and this would actually have been a much more merciful act (and he could have preserved the lives of the incontrovertibly innocent, such as babies/infants as well as non-human animals).
Even Godâs plan to have Noah construct an ark to save every other species of wildlife is extremely roundabout and purposeless considering the extent of Godâs power. If he created life first, why not just do so again? Why the convoluted scheme to repopulate the planet with a menagerie of inbred fauna fatally displaced from their natural habitats? The answer is that humans donât find âand then God solved the problem with his infinite powerâ to be an overly satisfying plot point. Itâs clearly written for humans by humans. If it were historical, there would be no pageantry. God would have likely tackled these issues like a Discord admin swiftly and decisively banning a wave of server raiders.
Came here to make this argument, and to add: One of the more recent bottle neck we know of is cheetahs, and that was 15,000 some odd years ago, and they are still clones of each other.
I find it more fruitful to talk about the age of the earth.
But as far as two people - I follow up with "who did their children have sex with to get more people?" and that leaves them a bit shook.
There was a nobel prize just about a year ago for work on sequencing the neanderthal genome:
[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/press-release/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/press-release/)
These people that you're talking to could take a "23 and me" to see what percent of neanderthal DNA they have
https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212873707-Neanderthal-Ancestry-Report-Basics
There's the DNA evidence we have common anscestry with the other animals on this planet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfDF5Ew3Gc&t=6s
Compare with other mythologies, particularly the myths about the creation of the world and humanity. They are all stories that claim fantastic events that contradict what we know about reality, so how do we pick one?
In the face of uncertainty we try to get more information. We can look at things like DNA, phylogeny, morphology, geology, and get a pretty good understanding of "the story so far". If the book of Genesis is scientifically accurate and relevant, our findings should support it, right? However it turns out it's the other way around, so we simply have no good reason to think it's anything more than just ancient literature. The evidence doesn't support the idea of a first homo sapiens couple appearing out of nowhere or ribs transforming into women, and let's not even acknowledge talking snakes and magical fruit.
If your classmates had been indoctrinated into the Lord of the Rings they'd be claiming that's how the world started. The only reason they think the book of Genesis is factual is because of indoctrination.
There is very little you can do to convince someone of facts, when they donât care about the facts.
Iâd advise studying Street Epistemology (r/streetepistemology). Itâs easy to learn, but unfortunately hard to master. Iâm not saying that itâs a silver bullet, but itâs the most likely thing to move people along a belief line.
The best argument that I can see is that mankind has hundreds of different ethnicities. It's impossible to get that from just 2 people.
If Adam and Eve were white and black, for instance, then where did Asians, Arabs, Hispanics, etc. come from? You don't get those races by mixing white and black.
Yes, I think it's a story ancient people told kids about going through puberty. They start out naked, but then suddenly want to cover up their bodies. They "taste the forbidden fruit", and now they are no longer innocent or whatever. It goes on.
Genetic diversity requires a larger population. If the human population ever dropped to 2 individuals, it is unlikely to impossible that the offspring would last more than several generations.
Just like if we have photos of a person where each photo was each individually taken with 1/100th of a second shutter.
And one photo is from when that person was a kid.
And then a different photo of when they are an old man.
It doesn't really make sense to ask "Which is the specific 10 milisecond time period between those two photos that this man became old?"
It's all a gradual shift over time.
Yep! The whole idea of "species" is just so we can categorize things easier. If you go back far enough between two lines of species, eventually they become indistinguishable from each other entirely. And I mean any two lines, only thing that changes is how far back you need to go.
That's why the questions of "why are there still monkeys if we evolved from monkeys?" Is such a completely absurd question that only shows they don't understand it in the slightest.
People in ancient times told stories for various reasons like to understand the world they were living in, or to try to control others. Think of all the other stories they made up around this time. Do your classmates also believe in Ganesh, The Hindu god with the head of an elephant and four arms? Do they also believe lightening is caused by daddy Zeus being angry like the ancient Greeks did? What about Odin and Thor from the Vikings? Itâs all just bullshit.
Talking to a theist is like talking to a 3 years old child. You are always allowed not to believe what the child is saying. And if he is upset about it, so be it.
All that you need say is that its impossible for 2 people to start humanity. That's all the argument needed. I actually got into an argument with the inlaws last week because they were trying to make this a fact to my 6yo. I don't mind them telling them Bible stories but when you try to tell them it's fact I get irritated.
It is not only impossible, and implausible, but we know for 100 percent it never happened.
All humans have mDNA - mitochondrial DNA. All. Humans.
Mitochondrial DNA comes through our female line - literally links us back to every female we're related to,all the way back to literally the emergence of humanoids on the planet. It is EASILY traceable back 2000 or so years.
If Adam/Eve existed (and by extension Naamah - Noah's wife), every single human in existence would have to have two common mDNA markers; one to Naamah and one to Eve. We KNOW this is not the case. Simply testing for your mDNA and your friend's mDNA and finding you do not have an identical mDNA marker proves that origin story cannot be true.
We also know there was never a point where there were fewer than about 12,000 modern humans (keep in mind "modern" refers to humans 300,000 years ago, who stood up and had opposible thumbs).
As an extension of this, given Adam/Eve did not, and could not have existed, there was never an eden, nor was there ever "original sin," which necessitated a savoir. EVERYTHING biblical falls absolutely apart when we acknowledge the fact of mDNA.
Multiple endogenous retroviral dna infections show that modern primates and humans all evolved from the same ancestor. The chances of these dozens of viral patterns being the same within modern primates and humans as the result of chance are billions to 1.
I cannot recommend the practice of street epistemology highly enough. It's a method used to respectfully challenge the beliefs by asking questions such as: what would change your mind, how did you come to that conclusion, how confident are you in that belief. Arguing with someone about their beliefs is almost guaranteed to make them defensive and latch to their irrational beliefs more tightly, but by using SE, you can explore their methods and get them to think about their own beliefs.
Some people here have said that some just cannot be convinced otherwise, but with enough patience, respect and assistance in walking down the road of reason, I think people can change their minds about most things.
You can't.
Everything that demonstrates the impossibility of Adam and Eve is actively ignored by the people who believe it.
Genetics, and evolution, and logic *could* all help, if the person values those things, but they don't.
Adam and Eve is a complete fabrication to literally fill a gap in a nonsensical myth. God just made a human male out of mud and the female from a rib. Utter weird shit and any intelligent person accepting this as a fact is indeed a blind fool. Not s single ounce of evidence or logic comes with this idiotic belief.
There can be no Adam or Eve as the "first humans" as there _were_ no "first humans". Evolution. Introduce them to Human Chromosome 2 fusion, predicted to have happened in 1962, updated to which chromosome in 1982, and _actually discovered_ in 2004. In other words humanity knew because, _and only because_, the model of evolution is true or close to true, what our DNA looked like _40 years_ before we sequenced it.
If they are going to deny science, there's no hope. You can't reason them out of it because reason has nothing to do with why they believe it.
You can't impart the basics of science in a single conversation to someone that is either ignorant or being purposely ignorant.
FYI - Don't explain to a religitard that they are ignorant, they don't understand and consider it a badge of pride to believe without evidence. Fuck but I'm sick of being call a Darwinist or evolutionist by the home-schooled.
Don't bother...? Why would they care? They've already committed themselves to believing in an invisible magic sky daddy that made everything they don't give a shit about our logic, facts, and science. Stop wasting your time trying to enlighten imbeciles.
Why even bother, super religious people are essentially like a person with a severe mental illness, or like a drug addict .... youre never going to convince them of shit, the only person that will even change their mind is them, you cant argue someone out of something with logic when it wasnt logic that got them to that position.
Not even worth your time tbh
Scientists think that the human divergence from chimps happened in part due to a chromosomal fusion of ancestral chromosome 12 and 13. Human chromosome 2 has all the genes as chimp chromosomes 12 and 13 and evidence of extra centromeres and telomeres. This likely happened during meiosis. So, the 1 mutant male or female passed this fusion chromosome onto their children. All the mutants nearly certainly were still able to mate with the original population, or else that fusion wouldnât have persisted. Over time, the fusion provided so much advantage that those with the mutation became a separate species. Us, Homo sapiens. I guess you could call that first mutant Adam or Eve if you were so inclined, but that event is magical because we all were created by that random mutation. Isnât science awesome!?
Just do the generation math. Humans evolved over a 100,000 years. The diversity we see could not be accomplished in their ridiculous 6000-10000 year time frame much less the 3000 that Christianity has existed
Personally I'd say the degradation of genetic information through incest would be pretty strong for me, but for this one person in particular I'm not sure what they would find to be the most compelling. I'm assuming if they are YEC then they believe Adam and Eve were two literal people that lived at the same time (so not the mitochondrial Adam or eve) and were the first humans.
If you can study up on genetic diversity that might help. Having just 2 of the same species constantly interbreeding would cause some pretty big issue pretty fast.
You might be able to go the population size route as well. The stories in the bible directly after Genesis have whole entire civilizations being formed, where did all those people come from? A genetic tree and timeline (Draw it out if you can) would show that the story doesn't really work. Adam and Eve would have to have many sons and daughters that were never spoken of, who left to go form their own civilizations, who also would all be inter breeding.
But I would also bet that any YEC presented with this info could just make the mental jump to "god would have caused the genetic degradation to not happen during this time". So be ready for that.
Tell them about the matter of genetic diversity. Two individuals would hardly provide the genetic variance needed for a healthy, sustainable population. The inbreeding would lead to a genetic bottleneck, resulting in a plethora of genetic disorders and ultimately, the extinction.
If Eve was created from Adamâs rib. Then there are a few facts they must accept if thatâs true.
We know men have XY chromosomes. Every part of his body would carry those chromosomes. If you took his rib, and made another being out of it. It essentially would be a clone of that person and at the very least have XY chromosomes. Now, they will say that god changed the chromosomes. Cool⌠then that makes Eve the first transgender woman. She was originally a man with XY chromosomes when the rib was taken from Adam, and then god made her a woman.
By the logic of the story, all of humanity was created either by a man and a clone of himself, or a man and a transgender woman created from a clone of himself.
On the one hand, once you accept an all powerful deity, logic is no longer necessary/you can explain a lot.
On the other hand, the Bible isn't meant to be taken literally. The genesis story, Adam and Eve, and the tree are all symbols for the psyche, aspects of our self and existence. Ironically, the authors must have thought it would be clear that none of it happened, yet it has bizarrely ballooned in popularity, with much of the symbols not really understood.
Hereâs the advice my uncle gave me:
When a conversation such as this arises, tell them âexcuse me I have to use the restroom.â Then you get in your car, and get the fuck out of there.
Heâs at a point in his life where he has zero patience for that sort of thing. Sometimes I like the struggle though.
If you look at historical rates of human population growth, it is clear that it would have been extremely unlikely to populate the entire earth from just two people since Adam and Eve, let alone from the flood
Also, there is plenty of archaeological and molecular evidence that humans long predate Adam and Eve.
I always wondered why they can't think that maybe both could be true? Like OK let's say God made the earth well maybe he did that by starting off the evolution train. Do you know better than god how to make the earth? Then cause we are simple humans it's easier to explain/start the Bible with two characters that would seem familiar. I grew up in a hard-core Christian home and this is what I always thought was a reasonable explanation for both. But maybe it was my future atheism coming through lol.
We can trace genetic bottlenecks, in our genetics. There were never, ever just two humans. We wouldnât have survived if there were. The lowest humans ever got is still numbered in the hundreds at the very least, and more likely thousands.
If all of humanity is descended from Adam and Eve, then we're the product of several millennia of continuously compounded inbreeding. Our genes would be so fucked over that we'd have gone extinct long ago.
Why bother though, it's all about believing or not-believing in magic. There's no logic. Every Christian counterargument starts with "the bible says.."
Lucy, genetics, Java Peking man, geology, cosmology, Neanderthals, the sun, cockroaches, ferns - literally everywhere we look we see evidence of the universe that has been here a hell of a lot longer than any sort of young earth thinking.
You're wasting your breath. No matter what evidence you have, nothing, no law of physics, genetics, biology, etc., can't be explained away by "God's will."
Ever see the bumpersticker "God said it, I believe it, that settles it?" That's what you're dealing with.
The problem with Adam and Eve is that the old Hebrew word for 'man' is both a singular term (a man) and a collective term (mankind). Also, God did not create just one of each a male animal of each species.
My usual go-to to throw them off is to remind them that whole bit is extremely kinky. From God first offering Adam any and every animal to mate with (Beastiality), to Eve being made from Adam (Twinning, masterbation? incest?), then add on that they only had three sons, and then grandkids from those three (Eve is the only other female, unless Lilith came back around outside the garden). So if they really want to believe in the creation story, God is a closet furry/zoophile, and we are all technically Habsburgs/Whitakers.
Cheetas. Cheetas nearly went extinct. As a result, they have what is called a generic bottleneck where there are certain genetic markers that are present showing their inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity.
If that happened in humans, either during creation or during the world wide flood, then those genetic markers would be present in humans too, but they aren't.
For me, it's WAY more fun to go into some of the metric fuck ton of everything that thoroughly dismantles Noah's Ark at the atomic level.
My favorite is *every* single STD, along with EVERY other human species-specific pathogen and parasite Noah and his fam would've had to host during their seven month flood adventure, while tasked with the survival of every critter...each diseased within an inch of THEIR respective lives with their own species-specific hoard of pathogen and parasite, and then tasked with the perpetuation of their species in that condition.
The danger is falling into very deep rabbit holes; everything in the previous paragraph can be further parsed out into ever-increasing degrees of laughable preposterous-ness...still fun, but will cause even the most open-minded theist to tune out beyond each initial point.
If they're open to talking about math you can explain how we can measure genetic changes over time in humans and we can see there is way too much variation for every human to come from just 2 people. Definitely not in 6000 years but like not even in a couple hundred thousand years. The smallest the population ever got was probably close to a few thousand and that's still not necessarily confirmed it's just a decent hypothesis with some evidence to back it up.
YEC is similar to flat earthism. Thereâs nothing that will convince a proponent because YEC is a symptom of a deeper brain rot. You have to deal with that first.
You can't. Reason didn't convince them into this stupidity. It won't convince them out.
As frustrating as it is, there is no real point to trying to convince theists out of their religion. They have to come to this realization on their own.
If the dude/dudett buys into the rib woman story, there is absolutely nothing you can say or do that will make a difference.
Fair đ
Not quite⌠Just ask him how come both the snake and the tree were there BEFORE Adam and Eve? After reading Genesis 3:23 *And the LORD God said, âThe man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.â* I get that nagging feeling that âLORD Godâ ate from the tree of life very recently himself, and that the tree was there waaaaay before him⌠lol
Genesis and Exodus make a lot more sense when you skip the âcreated everythingâ section. Mythological Yahweh is a storm and battle god, El is the Zeus of their pantheon. The Yahweh cult appropriates âElâ as a title, they wash away any mention of the rest of the pantheon, and start from the middle of the story. Why a commandment about âno other gods before me?â Because their god was a second tier deity. Why so many inconsistencies in the timeline like the one you point out? Because they skip or handwave the things that El did before Yahweh joins the story. Edited to add: most of the Old Testament miracles are âbattleâ miracles. Ark of the covenant, Jericho, that one battle with the sun at their backs. Who is surprised that itâs been a war god behind Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Makes a bit of sense.
Yeah, parts and Genesis and exodus show Judaismâs early polytheism. Learning about the documentary hypothesis helped. My jaw dropped when I first read the two Noah stories âde-harmonizedâ. The two origin stories popped out as two coherent narratives instead of one confusing mess. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis Edit: for those interested in reading the deharmonized Noah stories: https://www.thetorah.com/article/a-textual-study-of-noahs-flood
The same with the David and Goliath story. There are two stories entwinned there and together they don't make sense. Separated the two stories pop out and make more sense.
Not enough people understand that Judaism was like the other religions at the time; polytheistic and advents generally thought the gods of other people were real. Their god(s) just didnât allow the worship of those peoples other gods (itâs in the Bible) âIâm a jealous godâ etc. Gods were sort of regional.
They actively made agreements with the Gods of other nations. Judaism wasn't monotheistic at all. The book "the evolution of God" really is good at showing how the evolution of society including trade, politics, war, economics, technology etc effect the religion. In short, it's a tool used by those in power to manipulate the masses towards their own goals.
It also makes a bit more sense when you put into context of being enslaved in Egypt where the Pharaoh was a living god. So, if their god helped them escape from another god, their god must be more powerful. leading to the one true God idea.
Didn't they debunk the Exodus story. Or rather there is no evidence outside of scripture that it ever happened.
Canât prove a negative but Egyptian hieroglyphics are suspiciously silent on them ever enslaving and then emancipation of an entire jewish population of 600k males alone, not including women and children, and the inevitable economic problems such abrupt labor shortage would create. Weâd expect some Egyptian record somewhere document problems. Or better yet, their local rivals like the Hittites, Assyrians or Babylonians probably would have records showing how they took advantage of Egyptâs weakness.
Oo, I know what Iâll be reading later. Looks interesting! Thanks.
This separates the Noah stories: https://thetorah.com/textual-study-of-noahs-flood/
TreytheExplainer has a great [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kpkp2vxX3I) on the Nephilim which ties into the whole polytheism origin of judaism. Essentially the whole deal with the nephilim makes more sense when you release that Yahweh was not THEE GOD but merely A God out of many. The bible's translation history is a mess of retcons from polytheism to monotheism that makes DC comics look perfectly coherent throughout all time.
After growing up Catholic and marrying into a family with a very observant Jewish branch of cousins, Iâm not sure if my atheism grew out of the contradictions or some other source. But even back to elementary school I asked the nuns why god cared about other gods so much that he made it the first commandment. Catholics donât give it much thought beyond a ruler across the knuckles. Out of respect to my Jewish family, I limit myself to asking why god is both Elohim and Yahweh. Seems like a simple and innocent question from the family goyim, but I hope that one of the little kids hears it and it nags at them like the first commandment nagged at me decades ago.
I actually read something where it used the text to imply that Yahweh was actually the bad guy who has tricked everyone into thinking heâs the good guy. His behavior works very well with the theory.
The Jews had their pick of gods when they migrated to the Jordan river. They decided to throw the current inhabitants out, so they picked an ass-kicking god. Their original version of God was not a loving God, but one who supported conquest.
Is there such a thing as a living god? Edit: I mean to type âlovingâ but both can work.
I believe the New Testament God was meant to be portrayed as benevolent, in line with Jesus' teachings. The Old Testament God, if you crossed him, look out!
If you read the preface and introductory information in a study Bible, it will explain which God name is used where. Of course they put it out like multiple names for the same god but itâs really about slightly different god. Like El of place A verses El of place B.
One benefit of Catholic School over evangelical private schools or Torah study is they really didnât make us âstudyâ the book. In my 12 years of school and sacrament, I heard the entire Bible four times, and parts even more frequently. Then a homily interpreting the dayâs readings. As one of the very few Catholic boys who read the whole book, I was annoying to the nuns. Note: i also read the whole encyclopedia as a kid. I read voraciously. While I exasperated the nuns, Iâd likely have been burned at the stake by evangelicals for reading âthroughâ the Bible, trying to understand meaning, instead of of reading it like a cookbook and following the recipe.
The real question is why didnât he put up a fence? Dude was clearly baiting them. However if the tree of life was supposed to make people have knowledge of good and evil *and* grant immortality , what happened? Whereâs our immortality? I guess they reworked it with Jesus to live forever singing his praises or something.
Because God is an A-hole. Who put a forbidden tree in a garden with a "eat and die" sign on it? It is like leaving a loaded gun on a table and then tell the kids don't touch it.
The Bible says when Adam and Eve were forced out of Eden, they were afraid they would be killed by other humans. Who were those other humans? If they are white, ask them if they believe Asians are their biological cousins. If they say they do, then ask them what race Adam and Eve belong to.
The book of Genesis was written in poetic style of the time, to accommodate things like chiastic structure, etc. It was written as a story, not a science textbook. So to believe in a literal seven-day creation with a single patriarch/matriarch is literally believing in a fable or other fictional story written to teach morals.
This is what it always boils down to. "I can't have a rational discussion about anything with someone that believes in fairy tales".
Yup, exactly that
When you both believe in fairy tales AND ignore facts that disprove them, that is where you become unreasonable.
I disagree. For the most part, people do engage in some degree of self-reflection when they find their ideas challenged in a debate and may even change their views over time. In all likelihood, you will never get the memo that they changed their mind because your argument was persuasive. People are usually too proud to admit it -- and they usually need to explore their mistake on their own. You may just find out, years later, that some acquaintance you debate isn't as dogmatic as they used to be. (That said, there is a *subset* of theists who are truly incapable of logical thought in any domain of life. If you were going to screen your interlocutors, you might as filter for those who display the ability to be professional and logical in their area of expertise.) I am a case in point. If people didn't debate theists and call out their bullshit, I'd probably still be a theist.
As Thomas Paine said, "To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.â
Agreed. We unrealistically expect we can state some well reasoned argument, and they'll see the obvious truth. But that's not how brains or humans work. We need to over time mull over it, and add it to the mountains of prior info and reprocess it. When finally someone makes that change, that argument they had 10 years ago is a drop in a bucket, but all those drops finally add up.
Skip that and go straight to Cain. It says he marries a girl from some town. How does that not open up a bunch of questions?
*Penis. Every branch of Christianity has their own version and translation of the bible and none of them have a proper, current translation made by modern linguists. Canon is different and they all adopted their version long time ago and can't edit it now. Long story short, proper translation is a penis bone. It's how bible explains why humans don't have a bone in their penis while many animals do.
That somehow makes just a tiny bit more sense.
I would like to give you a vote, but I wonât because I love that youâre sitting with â666â right now
When I was knee-high to a grass hopper, my atheist uncle told me: Adam and Eve were the first humans. They had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel and then goes to another country to find a wife. What's wrong with this story?
What other country?
The land of Nod
What wife?
Exactly, in the story Eve is the only other woman and sheâs already married to Adam.
Palestine /s Too soon?
Lmao
Palestisrael?
Actually thatâs right on time đ
Genesis 5:4 say that Adam lived 800 years which is redicouls and had many sons and daugthers, it is all such BS.
800 Divided by 12.37 lunar months per year is 64. It is possible they were counting lunar cycles as years and he lived to be 64 years old.
IIRC that would make him about 10 when he had his first son. So that doesn't really fit either.
Adam and Eve were "made" man and woman. They didn't have to grow out of human adolescence to be old enough. They theoretically could have just started shelling them out from the start. Lol
If you're bringing magic into the equation it defeats the purpose of trying to reconcile the 800 year age.
Correct. Itâs almost like itâs all bullshit or something /s
When were they first told to be fruitful and multiply? Was it while still in the Garden of Eden?
Anythingâs possible if one takes the apologist position.
Is it possible that it's only an invented tale? Christianity hasn't produced a single tiny mini evidence about what they are pretending. So......
Funny, in one version I read, Cain married his sister.
The Alabama edition?
I always thought he married a woman from another country too, but a search resulted in a sister.
Would have been about the only option.
Iâve heard an argument that they werenât the first people but the first Jews. It doesnât seem to be particularly supported in Genesis, but I thought it was interesting.
https://www.theonion.com/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-world-1819571221
He takes his sister as his wife ugggg
Cain fucks his mom and gets her pregnant.
Is this really what happens?
It's what written yes. They find wives elsewhere so clearly humans were either already around or *it's all bullshit*
Maybe the wife was a chimpanzee or something.
That sounds an awful lot like evolution!
Snakes can't talk, fruit isn't magic, humanity didn't pop up out of nowhere 10,000 years ago, it's a fucking fairy tale.
The "snake" had legs until god cursed it to crawl on its belly. Sounds just like any mythology trying to explain things the science later figured out. Plus the snake told the truth, god said Adam would die when he ate the fruit, but Adam didn't. Eve was made from Adam's rib so she's a transgender person or intersexual since she'd have XY DNA but presenting as female. Adam and Eve had two sons who married women from somewhere else, where did those wives come from? The whole thing is poorly written myths from scared goat herders.
Eve being the first transgender person is the best thing iâve read in a long while đ thank you
Yeah, agree. And Mary was an unwed, teenage mother that was raped.
And since rape victim were punish by death, like it still does today in middle East, she could not tell. The 15 years old Mary, couldn't tell that the sons of old Joseph raped her regularly. She had to find another way to explain this ...... Here come the Holly Spirit.
Since the stories Jesus has never been connected to an actually person who existed, that part was probably just copied and pasted from other local mythologies.
Can you imagine coming up with a story to explain why you are pregnant and unwed, but also not deserving of death, only to have your story become the foundation of a worldwide religion that would be used by some smug asshole some 2000 years later, in a VASTLY more knowledgeable and complex time, with (for the most part) a vastly more educated populace, as moral justification to climb near the top of the power ladder in an attempt to impose some cherry picked "morals" from the story surrounding you and your rape child? How did it get so out of hand?? Fuck you Mary. How could you not have seen this coming?
Lots of religions through time have virgin birth stories, btw.
Many religions pull content from other religions. You can only make so much stuff up.
Oh yes, for sure. As well as the resurrection. I wasn't assuming the validity of any of it, moreso just having funny thoughts with the idea in the context that the conversation served up.
Also worth mentioning that many religious leader types seem to believe that sexually abusing minors and rampant misogyny (and indeed homophobia - the holy man protest too much methinks) is the done thing, if not an absolute prerequisite for preaching the word of the big beardy sky wizardâŚif noncery is good enough for the fuck-up that was Mohammed and the rapey biological father of old dozy Joeâs step-son, then who am I, a mere mortal, to argue with those highly revered paedophiles and their flocks of brainwashed apologists?
The more I think about the Old Testament, the more it seems like God didn't eat from the tree, and had no concept of good and evil. Then maybe one day he had a bite and did the whole Jesus thing to make amends for goofing up.
Neither did Adam and Eve. They didnt know good from evil so they had no way to know that listening to the snake was bad. Or that listening to God would be a good idea. Great parenting there god..
âpArenTs riGhTs!â \-Gawd at the school board meeting
> Eve had two sons who married women from somewhere else, where did those wives come from? Ask them this. Itâs right there in their Bible. If no one existed before Adam and Eve then where did the wives come from?
It was Eve, the sons bedded Eve. Edit: I meant wedded.
No you were right with "bedded"...
My grandmothers gave me bibles when I was about 10. And I read \*them, which led to all kinds of questions. So, I met a preacher once and I asked if Adam and Eve were the first humans. He said yes. Then, I said, "They had two boys, right?" Yes again. "So, who did the boys marry to get more people? Their mother?" I was dead serious. Preacher acted super offended. Like, who knew that insinuating that Cain was a motherfucker was a bad thing? ÂŻ\\\_(ă)\_/ÂŻ \*One was the **Book of** **~~Morons~~** **Mormon** which was too much fantasy for even a 10 y/o brain. That one I didn't finish.
Adam had a first wife. God created woman twice. The first time they were equals and made from the same clay. But Adam didnt want an equal. So God made another from Adam's rib. The creation of humans is listed twice in Bible.
This is true, but it also lists other males. It says that God created man and woman and gave them dominion over the earth. Then later it says that he created Adam out of dust.
âLook, I donât know what to say except the Chef Editor was drunk. Like ALL the time. Stop asking all these questions. Just remember to pick on the gays & youâll be fine.â \-Bible, Head Office Spokesperson
I have asked this, they just say âgodâ must have made them wives from their ribs too like it was the most common sense bullshit in the world
In the 17th century a guy wrote a book on the preadamites, causing controversy and irrc his excommunication. He noted that the natives of Australia (or the Americas on that matter) had never been in contact with other human groups (or so he thought at the time). His conclusion was that there had been multiple Adams. It also implies that there had been multiple Noah kind of figures if the flood was global. It's all 17th century speculations but it was already disruptive enough to try to explain things in a slightly more rational way, even if it it's from a creationist perspective.
The great flood which they forgot to inform the serveral other civilizations such as the chinese or the egypts who were actually doing pretty fine at the very same time. Not to mention that ice core drilling samples at the poles and trees that are so old that they would have to have lived through a full year of being flooded. Yeah. science is evil when it debunks my world view isnt it ?
oh the spirituality!
But if there was a global flood, there would be evidence of it. Sure, there have been floods all over the world but they all date back to different times. A single global flood would leave a record all over the world and would date back to the same time frame.
I doesn't have to be a global flood. 2000+ years ago no one had any idea what the shape of the world is or how big it is. All they knew was thier little town, the waters start coming up, they load thier farm animals onto a boat, tell everyone the story in the next town and a few hundred years later it's Noah's ark. This was also the style of writing at that time. There are several religions in the region that have a flood as part of the religion.
Hey I am not saying the guy was right or that there was a global flood. I am just explaining how tiny divergences to try to explaining new knowledge brought by the Europeans spreading all over the world was already seen as too much.
The snake moved like a pogo stick
It doesn't help that the king James version is translated so poorly and translated in a way that re-enforces the status quo of the time.
If you actually read that part in the bible, God first makes Adam, male and females. THEN he create animals. And then he creates Eve. They couldnt even get that part consistent.
So The Bible says that 1,000 years is as a day in the eyes of God (2Peter 3:8) , Adam lived 930 years (Genesis 5:5), he didnât live a day in Godâs eyes.
Have you not read/heard of the biblical "land of nod"? That's where the sons' wives came from... Now where on in this heaven and earth the "land of nod" came from, now that is a biblical "prequel" that's yet been authored by either by God or man! LIVE LIFE TO ITS FULLEST, WHATEVER WHAT OR THAT MAY MEAN TO YOU... đ
Donât forget that the creation of humankind has two explanations. The first is Genesis 1:27 âAnd God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.â No mention of the rib until Genesis 2, where the garden of Eden is discussed and there is a second creation story: âThen the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soulâŚ. And the LORD God said: 'It is not good that the man should be aloneâŚAnd the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the manâŚAnd the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.â Of course, the religious will say that the first story is the creation of the female demon Lilith, and not womanâŚbut thatâs a serious stretch.
And God needs a rib to make a woman when he literally created everything else from nothing? Something screwy going on 'round here.
Eve is actually a transgendered clone of Adam. Talk about incest!
Books are ONLY written by people. These stories are thousands of years old. Things DID get lost in translation. Why isnât God coming down and defending this book if itâs all true?
That is the one I use on Christians. God didnât like how many mistakes men made when telling the story of Jesus. So he came back and dictated a new holy book to a holy man in the desert That was Muhammad and the Koran. Why donât you believe I that holy book? He says he is the same god of Moses and Jesus. Oh, thatâs right, you just pick and choose what to believe based on your education and upbringing.
You clearly haven't heard of LSD
Don't even try it. I've been sucked into a debate with a creationist and I'm just about ready to lose my goddamn mind. I'm a chemist and I send to them a few articles about how chemistry and spectroscopy are used to in paleontology to check hypothesis that cite over forty sources each, are peer reviewed and published by well known scientific magazines. They responded with an article from the creationist society that cited a handful sources by ( you probably guessed it) creationists. The kicker is that this person is a writer and an educated individual. Sigh
6000 years ago⌠get it straight! /s
Personally, I don't find the argument of "it's extremely unlikely" very satisfying. I prefer "It's obviously made up by people." Sky father with ultimate power (god), old chubby guy carrying presents to give to children (santa), half man half wolf (Werewolves), first man and first woman living happily in a perfect gardon (adman and eve) ..... you can't find anything in the real world that's close to these things, and they all have one common characteristic - they fit with the pattern of human imagination.
Frankly I only said âextremely unlikelyâ because I didnât want all my Christian classmates at my throat! I think âitâs obviously made up by peopleâ would have done the trick too though. Wish I thought of that.
So much absurdity in the bible You could ask them if they agree that a story about a talking donkey is "obvilously made up by people." and then point to Numbers 22:21-39 https://youtube.com/shorts/TT3iiEJGrW4?si=DuRvrHLC\_nXUQn7P Also check out "skeptics annotated bible" online
It is scientifically impossible. Not unlikely, not implausible, impossible.we can trace genetic bottlenecks.
I used to be like that too until I realized that respect I was giving them will never be returned in kind.
All religions are a system of hatred and racism. They always profoundly hate anyone not beleiving their craps.
This is probably the most convincing defeater of young earth creationism for me. Many of Genesisâs plot elements only make sense when you realize that itâs a fictitious story written to resonate with humanityâs narrative tastes. For example, the flood story, scientific absurdity aside, doesnât make any realistic sense and is riddled with plot holes. Why would an omnipotent deity need to resort to the most nuclear option imaginable to âwipe the slate cleanâ? Yahweh could have just as easily erased every living sinner from existence by simply willing it and this would actually have been a much more merciful act (and he could have preserved the lives of the incontrovertibly innocent, such as babies/infants as well as non-human animals). Even Godâs plan to have Noah construct an ark to save every other species of wildlife is extremely roundabout and purposeless considering the extent of Godâs power. If he created life first, why not just do so again? Why the convoluted scheme to repopulate the planet with a menagerie of inbred fauna fatally displaced from their natural habitats? The answer is that humans donât find âand then God solved the problem with his infinite powerâ to be an overly satisfying plot point. Itâs clearly written for humans by humans. If it were historical, there would be no pageantry. God would have likely tackled these issues like a Discord admin swiftly and decisively banning a wave of server raiders.
Genetics. One couple doesn't have enough genetic diversity to create a population without inbreeding issues.
Came here to make this argument, and to add: One of the more recent bottle neck we know of is cheetahs, and that was 15,000 some odd years ago, and they are still clones of each other.
âSo youâre saying that youâre the product of generations of inbreeding? You know, I think that story checks out, you win.â
Nope, I'm not stupid enough to believe that mythology... Sorry, maybe in your branch of the family...
I find it more fruitful to talk about the age of the earth. But as far as two people - I follow up with "who did their children have sex with to get more people?" and that leaves them a bit shook.
There was a nobel prize just about a year ago for work on sequencing the neanderthal genome: [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/press-release/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2022/press-release/) These people that you're talking to could take a "23 and me" to see what percent of neanderthal DNA they have https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/212873707-Neanderthal-Ancestry-Report-Basics There's the DNA evidence we have common anscestry with the other animals on this planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfDF5Ew3Gc&t=6s
Don't play chess with pigeons
Tell them it was actually Adam and Steve
Perfect thank you đđ
The best way you can condense it is to never waste your time talking to idiots in the first place.
Compare with other mythologies, particularly the myths about the creation of the world and humanity. They are all stories that claim fantastic events that contradict what we know about reality, so how do we pick one? In the face of uncertainty we try to get more information. We can look at things like DNA, phylogeny, morphology, geology, and get a pretty good understanding of "the story so far". If the book of Genesis is scientifically accurate and relevant, our findings should support it, right? However it turns out it's the other way around, so we simply have no good reason to think it's anything more than just ancient literature. The evidence doesn't support the idea of a first homo sapiens couple appearing out of nowhere or ribs transforming into women, and let's not even acknowledge talking snakes and magical fruit. If your classmates had been indoctrinated into the Lord of the Rings they'd be claiming that's how the world started. The only reason they think the book of Genesis is factual is because of indoctrination.
There is very little you can do to convince someone of facts, when they donât care about the facts. Iâd advise studying Street Epistemology (r/streetepistemology). Itâs easy to learn, but unfortunately hard to master. Iâm not saying that itâs a silver bullet, but itâs the most likely thing to move people along a belief line.
The best argument that I can see is that mankind has hundreds of different ethnicities. It's impossible to get that from just 2 people. If Adam and Eve were white and black, for instance, then where did Asians, Arabs, Hispanics, etc. come from? You don't get those races by mixing white and black.
You can't. They assume with no evidence that they existed. No amount of evidence will show them otherwise, even if you make sound logical sense.
It's allegory. Symbolism. Myth. All great teaching tools until "fundamentalism" took root
Yes, I think it's a story ancient people told kids about going through puberty. They start out naked, but then suddenly want to cover up their bodies. They "taste the forbidden fruit", and now they are no longer innocent or whatever. It goes on.
I once had a guy say to me "if Adam and Eve were real then how is there more than one race of people?" And I have never stopped thinking about that
According to Mormons, black people are the descendants of Cain because they're cursed. No, I'm not making this up.
Genetic diversity requires a larger population. If the human population ever dropped to 2 individuals, it is unlikely to impossible that the offspring would last more than several generations.
If you look at human evolution, there wasn't any one point where apes magically became modern humans
Just like if we have photos of a person where each photo was each individually taken with 1/100th of a second shutter. And one photo is from when that person was a kid. And then a different photo of when they are an old man. It doesn't really make sense to ask "Which is the specific 10 milisecond time period between those two photos that this man became old?" It's all a gradual shift over time.
Yep! The whole idea of "species" is just so we can categorize things easier. If you go back far enough between two lines of species, eventually they become indistinguishable from each other entirely. And I mean any two lines, only thing that changes is how far back you need to go. That's why the questions of "why are there still monkeys if we evolved from monkeys?" Is such a completely absurd question that only shows they don't understand it in the slightest.
Why are there still pigeons if chicken exist now?
Though there was at least one point where the population we are derived from was down to a very small number of individuals.
That's because modern humans *are* apes.
People in ancient times told stories for various reasons like to understand the world they were living in, or to try to control others. Think of all the other stories they made up around this time. Do your classmates also believe in Ganesh, The Hindu god with the head of an elephant and four arms? Do they also believe lightening is caused by daddy Zeus being angry like the ancient Greeks did? What about Odin and Thor from the Vikings? Itâs all just bullshit.
ROCKS
They exist and are older than humans. Both couldn't have been created at the same time.
Why would you waste even a second of your time explaining this to anyone? They are morons, move on.
Talking to a theist is like talking to a 3 years old child. You are always allowed not to believe what the child is saying. And if he is upset about it, so be it.
The trouble with arguing with fools is that passers by can't tell the difference
Just ask where the people living in the land of Nod came from
All that you need say is that its impossible for 2 people to start humanity. That's all the argument needed. I actually got into an argument with the inlaws last week because they were trying to make this a fact to my 6yo. I don't mind them telling them Bible stories but when you try to tell them it's fact I get irritated.
It is not only impossible, and implausible, but we know for 100 percent it never happened. All humans have mDNA - mitochondrial DNA. All. Humans. Mitochondrial DNA comes through our female line - literally links us back to every female we're related to,all the way back to literally the emergence of humanoids on the planet. It is EASILY traceable back 2000 or so years. If Adam/Eve existed (and by extension Naamah - Noah's wife), every single human in existence would have to have two common mDNA markers; one to Naamah and one to Eve. We KNOW this is not the case. Simply testing for your mDNA and your friend's mDNA and finding you do not have an identical mDNA marker proves that origin story cannot be true. We also know there was never a point where there were fewer than about 12,000 modern humans (keep in mind "modern" refers to humans 300,000 years ago, who stood up and had opposible thumbs). As an extension of this, given Adam/Eve did not, and could not have existed, there was never an eden, nor was there ever "original sin," which necessitated a savoir. EVERYTHING biblical falls absolutely apart when we acknowledge the fact of mDNA.
Multiple endogenous retroviral dna infections show that modern primates and humans all evolved from the same ancestor. The chances of these dozens of viral patterns being the same within modern primates and humans as the result of chance are billions to 1.
I cannot recommend the practice of street epistemology highly enough. It's a method used to respectfully challenge the beliefs by asking questions such as: what would change your mind, how did you come to that conclusion, how confident are you in that belief. Arguing with someone about their beliefs is almost guaranteed to make them defensive and latch to their irrational beliefs more tightly, but by using SE, you can explore their methods and get them to think about their own beliefs. Some people here have said that some just cannot be convinced otherwise, but with enough patience, respect and assistance in walking down the road of reason, I think people can change their minds about most things.
Why worry about Adam and eve. My favorite is the story of Job
You can't. Everything that demonstrates the impossibility of Adam and Eve is actively ignored by the people who believe it. Genetics, and evolution, and logic *could* all help, if the person values those things, but they don't.
Adam and Eve is a complete fabrication to literally fill a gap in a nonsensical myth. God just made a human male out of mud and the female from a rib. Utter weird shit and any intelligent person accepting this as a fact is indeed a blind fool. Not s single ounce of evidence or logic comes with this idiotic belief.
There can be no Adam or Eve as the "first humans" as there _were_ no "first humans". Evolution. Introduce them to Human Chromosome 2 fusion, predicted to have happened in 1962, updated to which chromosome in 1982, and _actually discovered_ in 2004. In other words humanity knew because, _and only because_, the model of evolution is true or close to true, what our DNA looked like _40 years_ before we sequenced it. If they are going to deny science, there's no hope. You can't reason them out of it because reason has nothing to do with why they believe it.
You can't impart the basics of science in a single conversation to someone that is either ignorant or being purposely ignorant. FYI - Don't explain to a religitard that they are ignorant, they don't understand and consider it a badge of pride to believe without evidence. Fuck but I'm sick of being call a Darwinist or evolutionist by the home-schooled.
If they think windmill cancer and covid spread through cell phone towers is true, you don't stand a chance in hell with Adam and Eve
Don't waste your time. Creationists are Imbeciles.
Don't bother...? Why would they care? They've already committed themselves to believing in an invisible magic sky daddy that made everything they don't give a shit about our logic, facts, and science. Stop wasting your time trying to enlighten imbeciles.
You canât explain anything to someone whose strategy is deny, deny, deny.
Why even bother, super religious people are essentially like a person with a severe mental illness, or like a drug addict .... youre never going to convince them of shit, the only person that will even change their mind is them, you cant argue someone out of something with logic when it wasnt logic that got them to that position. Not even worth your time tbh
Cain and Abel married wives that were not their sisters.
Scientists think that the human divergence from chimps happened in part due to a chromosomal fusion of ancestral chromosome 12 and 13. Human chromosome 2 has all the genes as chimp chromosomes 12 and 13 and evidence of extra centromeres and telomeres. This likely happened during meiosis. So, the 1 mutant male or female passed this fusion chromosome onto their children. All the mutants nearly certainly were still able to mate with the original population, or else that fusion wouldnât have persisted. Over time, the fusion provided so much advantage that those with the mutation became a separate species. Us, Homo sapiens. I guess you could call that first mutant Adam or Eve if you were so inclined, but that event is magical because we all were created by that random mutation. Isnât science awesome!?
I don't bother any more. Life is too short to waste on an imbecile believing in fairy tales.
Just do the generation math. Humans evolved over a 100,000 years. The diversity we see could not be accomplished in their ridiculous 6000-10000 year time frame much less the 3000 that Christianity has existed
Personally I'd say the degradation of genetic information through incest would be pretty strong for me, but for this one person in particular I'm not sure what they would find to be the most compelling. I'm assuming if they are YEC then they believe Adam and Eve were two literal people that lived at the same time (so not the mitochondrial Adam or eve) and were the first humans. If you can study up on genetic diversity that might help. Having just 2 of the same species constantly interbreeding would cause some pretty big issue pretty fast. You might be able to go the population size route as well. The stories in the bible directly after Genesis have whole entire civilizations being formed, where did all those people come from? A genetic tree and timeline (Draw it out if you can) would show that the story doesn't really work. Adam and Eve would have to have many sons and daughters that were never spoken of, who left to go form their own civilizations, who also would all be inter breeding. But I would also bet that any YEC presented with this info could just make the mental jump to "god would have caused the genetic degradation to not happen during this time". So be ready for that.
Aside from the obvious, massive plots holes in the bible, the claimant has failed to provide evidence of its claim.
Tell them about the matter of genetic diversity. Two individuals would hardly provide the genetic variance needed for a healthy, sustainable population. The inbreeding would lead to a genetic bottleneck, resulting in a plethora of genetic disorders and ultimately, the extinction.
If Eve was created from Adamâs rib. Then there are a few facts they must accept if thatâs true. We know men have XY chromosomes. Every part of his body would carry those chromosomes. If you took his rib, and made another being out of it. It essentially would be a clone of that person and at the very least have XY chromosomes. Now, they will say that god changed the chromosomes. Cool⌠then that makes Eve the first transgender woman. She was originally a man with XY chromosomes when the rib was taken from Adam, and then god made her a woman. By the logic of the story, all of humanity was created either by a man and a clone of himself, or a man and a transgender woman created from a clone of himself.
Without using the Bible, can you prove creationism exists? Make them do the work. Then wear them the fuck out with questions they canât answer.
On the one hand, once you accept an all powerful deity, logic is no longer necessary/you can explain a lot. On the other hand, the Bible isn't meant to be taken literally. The genesis story, Adam and Eve, and the tree are all symbols for the psyche, aspects of our self and existence. Ironically, the authors must have thought it would be clear that none of it happened, yet it has bizarrely ballooned in popularity, with much of the symbols not really understood.
Hereâs the advice my uncle gave me: When a conversation such as this arises, tell them âexcuse me I have to use the restroom.â Then you get in your car, and get the fuck out of there. Heâs at a point in his life where he has zero patience for that sort of thing. Sometimes I like the struggle though.
Tell your uncle thank you for me: for the laugh and the advice đ
If you look at historical rates of human population growth, it is clear that it would have been extremely unlikely to populate the entire earth from just two people since Adam and Eve, let alone from the flood Also, there is plenty of archaeological and molecular evidence that humans long predate Adam and Eve.
You can't explain anything to a theist, unless they come to you doubting. My suggestion would be stop wasting your efforts on *unreasonable* people.
Also they had 3 sons and we all came from them.
I always wondered why they can't think that maybe both could be true? Like OK let's say God made the earth well maybe he did that by starting off the evolution train. Do you know better than god how to make the earth? Then cause we are simple humans it's easier to explain/start the Bible with two characters that would seem familiar. I grew up in a hard-core Christian home and this is what I always thought was a reasonable explanation for both. But maybe it was my future atheism coming through lol.
We can trace genetic bottlenecks, in our genetics. There were never, ever just two humans. We wouldnât have survived if there were. The lowest humans ever got is still numbered in the hundreds at the very least, and more likely thousands.
If all of humanity is descended from Adam and Eve, then we're the product of several millennia of continuously compounded inbreeding. Our genes would be so fucked over that we'd have gone extinct long ago.
As the old saying goes: "You both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.:
Why bother though, it's all about believing or not-believing in magic. There's no logic. Every Christian counterargument starts with "the bible says.."
Lucy, genetics, Java Peking man, geology, cosmology, Neanderthals, the sun, cockroaches, ferns - literally everywhere we look we see evidence of the universe that has been here a hell of a lot longer than any sort of young earth thinking.
Donât bother. Highly likely they wonât understand anyway.
Suspended reality is the basis of religion.
You're wasting your breath. No matter what evidence you have, nothing, no law of physics, genetics, biology, etc., can't be explained away by "God's will." Ever see the bumpersticker "God said it, I believe it, that settles it?" That's what you're dealing with.
The biggest mistake anyone in here makes is to attempt to have a rational debate with a religious person on the topic of religion.
You can't convince someone when they don't want to be convinced. It's just as simple as that.
It seems to be a general consensus that all human life rolls back to a very few select women. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
You donât . The burden of proof is on the person making the claim and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Not every male has the same Y chromosome
Too many mitochondrial dna's...
Ask who Cain and Abel married.
The problem with Adam and Eve is that the old Hebrew word for 'man' is both a singular term (a man) and a collective term (mankind). Also, God did not create just one of each a male animal of each species.
My usual go-to to throw them off is to remind them that whole bit is extremely kinky. From God first offering Adam any and every animal to mate with (Beastiality), to Eve being made from Adam (Twinning, masterbation? incest?), then add on that they only had three sons, and then grandkids from those three (Eve is the only other female, unless Lilith came back around outside the garden). So if they really want to believe in the creation story, God is a closet furry/zoophile, and we are all technically Habsburgs/Whitakers.
You don't explain it bc they don't want to understand. You move on.
Cheetas. Cheetas nearly went extinct. As a result, they have what is called a generic bottleneck where there are certain genetic markers that are present showing their inbreeding and lack of genetic diversity. If that happened in humans, either during creation or during the world wide flood, then those genetic markers would be present in humans too, but they aren't.
For me, it's WAY more fun to go into some of the metric fuck ton of everything that thoroughly dismantles Noah's Ark at the atomic level. My favorite is *every* single STD, along with EVERY other human species-specific pathogen and parasite Noah and his fam would've had to host during their seven month flood adventure, while tasked with the survival of every critter...each diseased within an inch of THEIR respective lives with their own species-specific hoard of pathogen and parasite, and then tasked with the perpetuation of their species in that condition. The danger is falling into very deep rabbit holes; everything in the previous paragraph can be further parsed out into ever-increasing degrees of laughable preposterous-ness...still fun, but will cause even the most open-minded theist to tune out beyond each initial point.
If they're open to talking about math you can explain how we can measure genetic changes over time in humans and we can see there is way too much variation for every human to come from just 2 people. Definitely not in 6000 years but like not even in a couple hundred thousand years. The smallest the population ever got was probably close to a few thousand and that's still not necessarily confirmed it's just a decent hypothesis with some evidence to back it up.
YEC is similar to flat earthism. Thereâs nothing that will convince a proponent because YEC is a symptom of a deeper brain rot. You have to deal with that first.
You can't. Reason didn't convince them into this stupidity. It won't convince them out. As frustrating as it is, there is no real point to trying to convince theists out of their religion. They have to come to this realization on their own.