Descendants of Adam

  • Thread starter Thread starter CollegeKid
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

CollegeKid

Guest
This might be a stupid question, but please bear with me. Its just that lately I’ve been having more and more of those moments where I realize I have a really basic question that my current understanding of the Faith has no answer for:

If we’re all descended from Adam, does that mean our earliest ancestors had to practice incest?
 
CollegeKid said:
How would this not cause major problems in the gene pool?
Click to expand...
God was quite capable of handling that. 🙂
Also, where would Cain and Abel’s wives have come from?
Click to expand...
From Adam and Eve (sisters of Cain and Abel).
Gen. 5:4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.

Nita
 
CollegeKid said:
This might be a stupid question, but please bear with me. Its just that lately I’ve been having more and more of those moments where I realize I have a really basic question that my current understanding of the Faith has no answer for:

If we’re all descended from Adam, does that mean our earliest ancestors had to practice incest?
Click to expand...
Yes, it does, and God allowed this because it was the only way to start the human race, to be fruitful and multiply.
 
Nita said:
Yes.
But it wasn’t a sin of course, because God had not yet forbidden it!
Click to expand...
That might be true, but I think it could be somewhat misleading.
In general, things are not sins because God says that they are. God says things are sins because they are sins. And we know that they’re sins because God says that they are.

As I understand it, the line drawn between how close of a relative you may marry is somewhat arbitrary (but not completely random, and established for very good reasons)…but in general, it’s not something directly covered under natural moral law. But since God has commanded us not to do so (again, for very good reasons), it is therefore sinful to disobey His commands. But before God gave us this command (aka: the earliest descendants of Adam and Eve), it would not have been a sin since there was no command from God to be disobeyed.
 
masterjedi747 said:
That might be true, but I think it could be somewhat misleading.
In general, things are not sins because God says that they are. God says things are sins because they are sins.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure I agree with your statement. Unless by “sin” you mean things that are not good for us. I do agree that the reason God forbids or commands certain things is because they are either harmful or good/beneficial for us. And he did place within our souls a certain knowledge of the natural law (knowable to us through reason and conscience). Sin is an offense against God either by disobeying His commands given thru Scripture and/or the Church and by going against the knowledge of His eternal law which He placed within us.
But God makes laws that are not based on moral evils. An example would be the many dietary laws in the Old Covenant, the many laws regarding cleaness and uncleaness; etc. If these things were sinful in themselves, God would never have had the Church set them aside in the New Covenant.
But before God gave us this command (aka: the earliest descendants of Adam and Eve), it would not have been a sin since there was no command from God to be disobeyed.
Click to expand...
I thought that was what I said.

Nita
 
Nita said:
God was quite capable of handling that. 🙂

From Adam and Eve (sisters of Cain and Abel).
Gen. 5:4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.

Nita
Click to expand...
800 years, Wow, how much kids could two people have in this many years…

I am sure he threw them all out at 21. :rolleyes:

Perhaps this is why God allowed people to live so long, to populate the Earth.

In Christ!
 
No it does not. Genesis is much like a parable about the creation and such. In it, we see them talkling about cities when they talk about Cain and Abel.
 
Nita said:
I’m not sure I agree with your statement.
Click to expand...
I guess what I’m trying to point out is that moral laws are not arbitrarily decreed by God just because He wants them to be that way. Murder isn’t immoral because God wants it to be so. In other words, murder doesn’t offend God because it breaks some law He established…it offends God in and of itself, through the nature of what it is. God then gives us the law because it offends Him, and because He wants us to know that it offends Him.

It’s a slightly different situation from this one, however, since in this case God is declaring a law for mankind, not because it is an action that inherently offends him, but simply because it is for our own good. Intentionally breaking this law would be a sin of disobedience against God, while the previous example would additionally (and perhaps more deeply) offend Him by the very nature of what it is. It’s just a subtle distinction that I think is important to keep in mind here. God couldn’t turn around and declare tomorrow that murder is morally acceptable…but He theoretically could (and obviously did in Genesis) allow for brothers and sisters to be married.
 
masterjedi747 said:
I guess what I’m trying to point out is that moral laws are not arbitrarily decreed by God just because He wants them to be that way. Murder isn’t immoral because God wants it to be so. In other words, murder doesn’t offend God because it breaks some law He established…it offends God in and of itself, through the nature of what it is. God then gives us the law because it offends Him, and because He wants us to know that it offends Him.

It’s a slightly different situation from this one, however, since in this case God is declaring a law for mankind, not because it is an action that inherently offends him, but simply because it is for our own good. Intentionally breaking this law would be a sin of disobedience against God, while the previous example would additionally (and perhaps more deeply) offend Him by the very nature of what it is. It’s just a subtle distinction that I think is important to keep in mind here. God couldn’t turn around and declare tomorrow that murder is morally acceptable…but He theoretically could (and obviously did in Genesis) allow for brothers and sisters to be married.
Click to expand...
Agree with you completely. 🙂
Nita
 
CollegeKid said:
This might be a stupid question, but please bear with me. Its just that lately I’ve been having more and more of those moments where I realize I have a really basic question that my current understanding of the Faith has no answer for:

If we’re all descended from Adam, does that mean our earliest ancestors had to practice incest?
Click to expand...
This is only a problem for a strict, word for word, literal interpretation.

Genesis also talks of Cain founding cities and such… hardly something that is possible without a large established population.
To the best of our knowledge, our most recent common ancestors lived about 150k years before the first cities.

It also shows Adam and able practicing agriculture and herding which are also anachronistic with human origins.

Clearly the lesson of the story is that God created man…how he did it really doesn’t matter.
 
steveandersen said:
This is only a problem for a strict, word for word, literal interpretation.

Genesis also talks of Cain founding cities and such… hardly something that is possible without a large established population.
To the best of our knowledge, our most recent common ancestors lived about 150k years before the first cities.

It also shows Adam and able practicing agriculture and herding which are also anachronistic with human origins.

Clearly the lesson of the story is that God created man…how he did it really doesn’t matter.
Click to expand...
Careful that you don’t promote the “Polygenesis” heresy.
 
Br.Rich_SFO said:
Careful that you don’t promote the “Polygenesis” heresy.
Click to expand...
Don’t put words in my mouth brother.

Although IIRC, there is some serious theological talk about separate physical and spiritual monogenesis which seems to be consistent with observable data.

Way out of my pay grade of course.

I just know that faith and reason can’t contradict so one day someone far smarter than I will figure it out.
 
CollegeKid said:
This might be a stupid question, but please bear with me. Its just that lately I’ve been having more and more of those moments where I realize I have a really basic question that my current understanding of the Faith has no answer for:

If we’re all descended from Adam, does that mean our earliest ancestors had to practice incest?
Click to expand...
I’ve heard differently than some of the other posters.
We know that God created Adam and Eve, but there isn’t any reason for us to believe He didn’t create others. Adam and Eve were just the first.

Am I off?

michel
 
cazayoux said:
I’ve heard differently than some of the other posters.
We know that God created Adam and Eve, but there isn’t any reason for us to believe He didn’t create others. Adam and Eve were just the first.

Am I off?

michel
Click to expand...
Other than the fact that the Church teaches that we ALL descended from Adam and Eve (or else Original Sin wouldn’t apply to everyone)…
 
cazayoux said:
I’ve heard differently than some of the other posters.
We know that God created Adam and Eve, but there isn’t any reason for us to believe He didn’t create others. Adam and Eve were just the first.

Am I off?

michel
Click to expand...
Basically we don’t know
Cain’s wife is introduced without explanation.

With a small enough starting population with one longed-lived dominant pair everyone would be A&E descendants within a generation

Some are uncomfortable with the notion of preplanned incest while others are equally uncomfortable with the “bestiality” aspect of non-ensouled humans being present

Personally I think that it is one of those questions that you don’t want to ask
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top