Was The Earth Populaed Through Incest?

[EarthAngel2015]

Can anyone answer these questions? It is said that we are all Adam’s seed; we are all related since we are the descendants of Adam and Eve and that the world was populated through incest as the DNA was pure in those days and there was no one else on earth to marry. If that is the case, why is it that it’s a problem to have a child for my cousin and not a problem to have a child for my husband? Isn’t my husband’s DNA polluted too? Aren’t we all from the same bloodline? Why is the genetic code polluted for only some people?. Incest is a crime today. How do you explain the logics that I am not related to my husband and many of my male acquaintances why it would not be a health problem to bear their children? So, are we only related to some people and not related to another set? Did the Bible teach that?

[Canary42]

It depends on whether you Adam and Eve the Holy Bible.

[Bathsheba]

As this has been posted in Genealogy + not Religion + Spirituality, is it ok to say lmao? ;)

[jno]

there have been genetic bottlenecks, such as after the eruption of Mt Toba about 70,000 years. It's thought the human race may have been reduced to 15,000 people.

[hc4361]

There were millions people on earth that had evolved over millions of years in to a semblance of how we are now. These people had no conscience nor sense of guilt and were driven by animal instinct; in essence they lacked humanity.

God decided to create mankind in his own image and so gifted Adam and Eve with humanity. Adam and Eve were not related and so there was no incest.

[Peter Pedant]

I think you could usefully read any book with the word ''Genetics' in the title

lots of question and you will find most of the answers there

Bible NOT good on DNA, purity of bloodlines and genetic code - in fact I doubt if any of those words occur there

[Peter Pedant]

hc yeah but no but

adam and eve's children would have had to commit incest
cain abel seth and azura - them

I mean blimey thats a lot of incest and TG the Bible isnt true !

[hc4361]

Peter, for genealogy in the Bible I suggest you look at Matthew 1:1-16

[Rtaxron]

I thought we came from apes, and Adam & Eve is a Myth!

[hc4361]

No they didn't, Peter. They had plenty of people to choose from who hadn't been gifted humanity and that is what they did.

[hc4361]

Did you, RTaxron? How strange.

[EDDIE51]

Incest is recommended in many places in the Bible. Even seducing your own father is recomended as a way to carry on the family line.

[hc4361]

But the NT put us right on that, Eddie. We had evolved more than enough 2000 years ago :D

[mastercraft]

I think you should forget the past and focus on the future... now that we have the ability to shape it!

[Mosaic]

If you accept the Garden of Eden version of creation, then you need to further examine the timescale involved. A long-past episode of inbreeding may not be of genetic consequence.
This is for one reason: whether you see it as divine guidance or not, nature (or DNA) only permits the survival of healthy specimens. The rest die. So continued inbreeding results in a smaller community, and over time a population that is too closely interbred dies out.
So if we are all descended from Adam and Eve, we've got away with it as we are healthy.
'Polluted bloodlines' is a telling phrase. We've all got bad apples in our ancestry, we just don't know about them. And utlitmately we are all related beacuse we are the same species.
We are told in the Bible that the menfolk mentioned along the way regularly bred with slaves they had acquired. So there's one pathway along which the gene pool diversified and remained healthy. It was usual in the ancient world for slaves to fit in with the cultures of their owners - so they and their children would become identified as 'part of the tribe'.

The events covered in the Bible were described in the words and concepts that were available to past cultures. But we now know that the timescale involved in human development is vaster than ever could be imagined by those ancient Jewish writers.

Many people of faith are prepared to interpret the Bible account as an extended metaphor, rather than an actual literal portrayal of events.

[Retrochic]

'People' lived 'millions of years ago' . Wow, it beats me how Faith completely ignores Science and Evidence. Where are all the fossils of these 'millions' of people who lived millions of years ago?
As for Adam and Eve ,yes they had kids who had sex with each other and their grand kids had sex with their brothers and sisters until the world was populated by millions of chosen ones. It must be true its in the Bible.

[Mosaic]

Us pesky scientists with our 'evidence'.
Here's a list of the humna fossils known at the moment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
Most organic matter does not get fossilised but breaks down into constituent compounds and minerals. So having fossil evidence of any organism living in the distant past is quite wonderful. I hope I can be a fossil. Some say I already am.

[Gromit]

No.

There were more than 2 first humans. Breeding within a close group undoubtedly would have occurred, but that is no reason to believe it would mean siblings and parents. The wider the gene pool, the better the group would be at survival.

[petal54]

the population started off smaller,from supposedly Africa,so are probably related thosands of years ago,so no great problem now

[naomi24]

//Was The Earth Populaed Through Incest?//

No – and if you read the bible without the pre-conceived notions taught by religion you will see that the earth wasn’t populated through incest. There are two creation stories. In the first God created man (a race) in his own image; in the second God created Adam from the dust of the ground because there was no one to till the land. Adam was a gardener – his son Cain went off and married a woman from the Land of Nod – its location unknown but clearly populated when Cain arrived.

All that said, evolution is a better bet for the original emergence of man.

[Retrochic]

Depends on what you mean by 'the population' . We only have evidence of Homo sapiens (us) going back around 120,000 years. So does the Bible say that Adam and Eve were the first Homo Sapiens ? If so where does the millions of years ago 'people' come into it? Did God Zap them in his wisdom and infinite kindness?