<p>So, I don't get the logic of humankind emerging from a single set of parents. How many children did they produce, and did that group have sex to produce even more children? Is incest against the Bible? We know that interbreeding over time produces offspring less reproductively fit. If so, why didn't the population die out? Does this story coincide with the evolution theory? In other words, when did the first species of modern humans first emergy (0.2 million years ago, right?) and when did Adam and Eve emerge?</p>
<p>Go to church. That'll solve all of those problems.</p>
<p>.-_-.</p>
<p>...or just look at the facts.</p>
<p>I noticed you have eliminated three words.</p>
<p>yeah, I realized that those weren't particularly relevant.</p>
<p>Hmm, very good explanations.</p>
<p>Well, if things don't make sense, they usually aren't real. It's like the pop-ups you get on the internet that say, "Free Laptop if you answer our survey." It's just too good to be true. You have to look at the facts and say, "Well, they could get these answers for free from most people, so why give them a laptop? It wouldn't be profitable." If things aren't logical, then why believe them?</p>
<p>Who says we are to take the Adam and Eve narrative literally? (It may be surprising to some, but the Catholic Church doesn't! Read Joseph Ratzinger's commentary on Genesis In The Beginning...) Genesis is a spiritual book, not a history book: it is loaded with metaphor and symbolism. The essential message in it to grasp is that the universe has a Creator -- God -- and that human beings are His children. </p>
<p>When looking at Genesis, it is important to remember who it was originally written for some 3,000 years ago: nomadic, desert-dwelling warrior tribes called the Hebrews. These nomads were not exactly educated in things like physics and biology, so regarding issues like the creation of the universe and humankind God spoke to them simply, on their level, so that they could understand. He spoke to them as a father would to his young child. </p>
<p>In short, when approaching Genesis, read between the lines.</p>
<p>Well, my interpretation is that the Genesis should be dismissed entirely.</p>
<p>You'll get more detailed answers if you post this thread in the Parental section.</p>
<p>I would like Fides Et Ratio to explain. Thanks.</p>
<p>
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You'll get more detailed answers if you post this thread in the Parental section.
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</p>
<p>I think that's true with ALL threads in CC...</p>
<p>"Well, my interpretation is that the Genesis should be dismissed entirely."</p>
<p>Well, just because you don't believe that Genesis is a God-inspired text doesn't mean that it "should be dismissed entirely." It is still a great and influential work of ancient literature, like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or Hesiod's Theogony. I don't know of anyone who still believes in the classical Greek religion, but people to this day manage to find much fruit in the study of those texts. </p>
<p>Two of the greatest contemporary Genesis scholars, Robert Alter and Everett Fox (both professors of Hebrew), aren't religious men in the least -- both are Atheists. Yet they still recognize the great literary and historical value of the text.</p>
<p>Faith</p>
<p>Pronunciation: (fāth), [key]
—n.
8. Christian Theol.the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved</p>
<p>Faith isn't always logical. That's why it's called faith.</p>
<p>.-_-.</p>
<p>"Faith isn't always logical. That's why it's called faith."</p>
<p>It becomes a problem when people say "God created a man and a woman for a reason."</p>
<p>The Bible is a great work of fiction. What I was trying to say was that it shouldn't be taken as truth or the basis for truth.</p>
<p>According to the information I've been getting:
Adam and Eve were created by God then sent to earth as punishment because they took an apple from the forbidden tree.
When they went to Earth, they had three kids; two guys and a girl. The guys fought over the girl so one guy killed the other and had sex with the girl.
They had kids who then had more kids and so on...
As for what we have now (multiple families): (This part is just logic; have nothing to back it up):
Somewhere down the road, two people had four kids (or any even number). Each two got married and produced four different families (which we now call cousins.) Those families then kept interbreeding till we had lots of people.
and..VOILA! We are noe over-populated and more than six billion people on this earth because they couldn't keep their hands off an apple.</p>
<p>"The Bible is a great work of fiction."</p>
<p>People who say that never read the Bible. If it's such a great work of fiction, why not read it? Everyone likes great works of fiction. </p>
<p>Maybe it's because the Bible is the one great work of fiction your friends, or even strangers on buses, will look at you funny for reading. It would make you uncomfortable to be seen reading this great work of fiction openly.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Want to understand the Bible? Then understand the historical context underlying its writing and compilation.</p>
<p>One excellent work on the subject is How to Read the Bible, by Marc Brettler, the chair of the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis.</p>
<p>Brettler shows that there are often multiple versions of the same story -- for example, two creation stories, one right after the other. Get a sense of where scholarship on the Bible is right now. After all, isn't that why you want to go to college -- to find out what scholars, experts in their fields, know?</p>
<p>And, by the way, the author of the book is a religious Jew who says the Bible is extremely meaningful to him. But not because it is true in a simple, literal manner.</p>
<p>I don't know about Catholics, but Jews are not supposed to take the stories before Abraham literally. They're more about morals and such- they may not have necessarily happened.</p>
<p>By the way- The Jews/Hebrews weren't warriors. If you actually go and read the bible, you'll see that they were nomadic only when they travelled from Egypt to Israel. Once they arrived in Israel, they settled down.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church also does not preach a literalist interpretation of the Creation narrative of Genesis, or of many other stories found in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), such as Job and Jonah. Jews, especially Orhodox Jews, are in general actually quite a bit more literalist or conservative in their interpretation of the books than are Catholics. </p>
<p>On a related note, based on scholarly evidence, virtually all Catholic biblical scholars today reject the idea of Mosaic authorship (that Moses himself wrote the Torah/Pentateuch). There are, however, tons of prominent Orthodox Jewish biblical scholars who say "evidence be damned" and persist in teaching Mosaic authorship, no matter how empirical the evidence against it is.</p>