1 man, 1 woman.
They have children.
Who do the children marry?

thenumberone : They did marry their sisters, but it wasn't wrong. The rules of that were changed later on... And when one disobeys the law then it is wrong. Also the Children of Adam and Eve were also very early born, which means they had fewer impurities than their are now days...

I agree with darthyoda.  Also, there are some pretty reasonable theories out there which state that God created more people outside of the garden.  The bible says that Adam and Eve were the first, but it does not say they were the ONLY people God created.

I'm up in the air about the theories myself, and as mentioned, they are theories.  I'd have to read some debates about it to get a strong feeling on how I stand on the issue.

darthyoda : (WAY LATE DEBATE REPLY)


...So? Those theories have WAY less holes than the bible. It actually makes sense in ways. Whilst there are inconsistencies, it has much less inconsistencies than the bible.

The garden of Eden is an interesting story.  Firstly, God says 'go forth and multiply' after he's created the world, everything in it and Adam and Eve.  Initially, there don't seem to be any restrictions and he's operating pretty much like you'd expect an all powerful being to do.  But then he changes tack, and says there's a tree whose fruit can't be eaten.  That's a middle management type restriction.  Why is he focused on details like that.  Then a snake appears - a talking snake at that.  Where did he come from.  Why would God create a snake that was out to disrupt his plans?  The snake is seductive, and ends up convincing Eve and then Adam to eat the fruit.  And what is the consequence?  A sin, but what is the sin?  That they had 'knowledge'?  What type of knowledge?  Well, they 'knew' each other.  In the meantime, God has cleared off somewhere, then comes back and is actually 'walking' around the garden looking for them and can't find them.  So we've had a God who creates the world, then one who creates man and woman, then creates Eden, then he disappears and reappears and has no clue what his only two creations have been up to and is surprised and angry by the outcome.  He figures out what's gone on (come on!). Then he expels them from the Garden, put's a guard on the door to stop them coming back in, damns them with the curse of child birth and having to till the land, but then personally gives them furs etc so that they can survive in the wild, and then clears off again.  Seriously, this story is all over place.  I feel sorry for Adam and Eve.  They weren't worldly people, they didn't have a clue what was expected of them (other than to 'multiply'), they had no skills, no knowledge and as soon as they made a childish error - they were out. 

darthyoda : "He didn't flood the Earth because they multiplied. They sinned, and reaped the consequences of their own doing..."

I agree that this is what the story of noah's ark is about. It's been a while since I read it but I believe it says that all of the humans were sinners except for Noah who was the only righteous person or it says something similar to that. This is one of the main stories in the Bible that leads me to believe that the Christian version of God is not omniscient or possibly omniscient but incompetent.

If God knew before hand that humanity would have to be killed off then he would have started over, so to speak, much sooner. A supposedly omniscient God would have realized that creating the forbidden fruit would cause humans to go down this path of self destruction and that he would need to fix things. It also raises questions about why God would create the fruit in the first place when he obviously doesn't want adam and eve to eat it or want humans to sin.

The story of Noah's Ark when compared to other parts of the Bible also suggests that God deals with sinners in drastically different ways. I would expect an all powerful and all knowing God to have an understanding of the best way to achieve his goals and have some amount of consistency with his actions towards achieving them. I could get into more detail than this but I will just leave a basic example of what I mean. God could have given this pre-flood world his Law ( or given the Law to Adam and Eve for that matter) instead of waiting generations until the time of Moses. Likewise he could have sent Jesus way earlier to prevent the need for the flood.

Is it unreasonable to expect a perfect being to do things right the first time? Perhaps God isn't perfect.

smotpoker86 : of course god knew and planed for every event in the bible he knew humans where sinners this is self evident in the fact he created Satan and allowed him to tempt us and in the fact he created Jesus to die for our sins

as for creating the fruit without that their is no free will

GOD is perfect but gave us free will to be imperfect just like a parent dose we set our rules and the consequences but in the end our children will do what they will do that dosn't reflect on us it's just what free will is

Excuse me if I didn't read everything.

There are some obvious problems with one man and one woman being the progenitors of all of humanity. 144 individuals seems to be the limit on having a stable gene pool. Eden and the Ark? Well who got both the tape worms?

For the strict literal creationists? There is no defense of their beliefs other than faith.
In the context of a being who creates the whole world in 6 days (or more favorably ages) then took a nap.

Given faith in that, most things look possible.

Reason is the poor cousin of faith. I would love to believe in a rational human being, I have just never met one, and can logically prove that none exist. (go on, push that button )

Beating up on decent honest human beings, for their beliefs, might seem to some to be a service to rationality. I challenge anyone who wants to indulge in that vice provide me with evidence of pure rationality.

And the apple? It is knowledge.. There is deep knowledge in most religions that rational thought cannot replicate.