Christianity is incestous?

[Flores]

Originally posted by airavata
So who is qualified to interpret the word of god? There are so many uncertainties regarding god, and no one can make any statement in connection with your 'maker' with absolute certainty. Why don't you tell us about someone who fully understands god and all his devices? No one does. Instead of rubbishing Q's point, why don't you think about it? It might free you from slavery.

Nobody is qualified to teach religion. Abolish everyone that preaches religion and act as a religion teacher. Religion is private issue and everyone may interpret it as they please, and only to god is their final account and judgement. I would love to continue this discussion with you but it have a prerequisite, and that is that you have a strong grasp on the concept of self responsbility and self accountability. Without that, I'm blowing air in a tornado, and your annoying request and pressure that you keep applying on me to make YOU understand or to even ask me or anybody else to point you in the right direction is ludicrous. Only YOU can set yourself straight, and as my mommy always tell me, when they hang a man, they hang him from his own neck, not his best friend neck, or his mother or father neck...YOUR OWN NECK AIRVATA.

Originally posted by airavata
Yes, Flores. You hit the nail bang on the head. Pity for us that evolution created us unequally. Is this statement meant to be funny or sarcastic? I thought the power of your 'maker' would imbue it with extra causticity . Instead of filling up the page with inconsequential babble such as this why don't you answer his question directly?

Who am I?, the silly soul that could judge the power of my creator?. At least, I attribute conciousness, wisdom, mercy, compassion, ect, to my maker. Yet you believe in evolution, a concept that doesn't have concious, mercy, wisdom, ect..... And while you are at it, instead of asking me further questions, and since you know it all about evolution, please direct your future concerns and hate toward your evolution. Maybe your evolution could have a concious to create something like you with a concious and could just answer you back for once and tell you why she was so unjust or just or whoever knows what evolution is thinking?. Can a rock make a man...No....Why?, because the rock misses elements of complexity that the man have. Yet, you think the goddess evlolution created you......Good for you and wish you luck, and I hope that one day when you die that you get a chance to finally understand this evolution of yours. Spare me Airvata......the requirement of a healthy conversation between us doesn't exist, we have two options, to abstain or to seriosly and sincerely bridge the gap.

 

[river-wind]

Cain was banished from the sight of God for killing his brother. He then went on to marry and father shildren, the decendents of whom were known as Cainnanites by the time of the NT.

If at the time of Cain, you had three people, Adam, Eve, and Cain (able is dead), and Cain is the only human out of God's sight, then who did Cain marry?


For the first few thousdand years, the 1st cousin of a woman had the first claim to marry her. Today we would consider this incest.


And no, Incest does not create genetic problems on it's own. It simply magnifies exsisting ones by increasing the chances that a defective gene will begin to display it's characteristics in the individual in question. For example, if a mother has a mutated gene which would cause her to have 6 fingers is recesive (assuming a single-gene control on this, which is a simplification), but she marries a man without that gene, there is a 0% chance her kids will have six fingers, and only a 25% chance they will carry the mutated gene. However, if she were to marry her brother, there is a better chance that he will have a copy of the mutated gene himself. If they were to have kids, there is now a 25% chance that their kid will have 6 fingers, and a 50% chance that the kid will carry the mutated gene.

The more that inbreeding occurs, the more likely that mutated gene will be passed on. If you are likely, these genes are helpful for survival, and later it is called "evolution." Nearly 90% of the time, those mutations are not helpful for survival, and are called "deformities". They are, truely, the same thing at their root.

 

[atheroy]

jenyar

Thanks for noticing my lack of expertise about evolution, but I have the same right to an opinion as you.

do you have no standards? what is the point of having an opinion if it is ill-informed? i wasn't questioning your right to an opinion, more, how can you have an opinion on something you yourself admit to having a lack of knowldge on? i don't respect that sorry.

I'm reading up about it every chance I get - but it is a HUGE field containing multiple concepts, scientific fields, definitions and theories.

commendable. at least you're making an effort, i know too many people that discount things purely on their religious grounds.

You simply assume I have to discount everything because of a Christian bias. That just isn't true; the truth can't threaten me.

no, i know you are at first skeptical of things that are against your religion. that makes things harder to understand and harder to accept. i was lucky, my parents enforced only a good moral code onto me. i've grown up being skeptical or averse to almost nothing, and from my personal experience, this has helped me to no end compared to those religious mates of mine. they generally had difficulty learning such things and understanding them in school, sheerly because of an inbuilt bias instilled into them since birth.

What I do find hard to believe, is that some people use evolutionary mechanisms (which certainly do exist) and then go on to say that they lead to an increase of genetic information by "learning" from an information poor environment. Like crabs trying to climb out of a bucket. I have seen no evidence to support that these mechanisms are powerful enough to do that without external support. If you could provide some, please do (although it is off topic and there are better places in the forum to continue such a discussion).

i'm assuming you mean how does genetic information evolve (if i've assumed wrongly please tell me)? learning is incorrect as a term here. selection pressures are the key. i'm not completely sure this is what you are wanting me to give you examples of, so i'll stop here unless you say i'm on the right track.

The books of the Bible didn't all originate at the same time. Nobody thinks so. The laws in the Bible were necessary to expose sin and were for the protection of the race. As I tried to show with my two-seatbelt law: a law is not necessary until it becomes necessary, and just as there is no "contradiction" between no laws against speeding 300 years ago, vs. laws against speeding today, there aren't between Genesis and Leviticus.

okay. i just have trouble with people stating god is omni(insert whatever you want in here), yet is inconsistent in his laws (among other things). our laws are subject to change because we advance technology, therefore have to regulate it accordingly. god never had to do this as he was already advanced, to the point of perfection. no more advancement. so i can see why we have these cushions, but i don't see why god should, as from the beginning he didn't need them, he just already knew. that's why most of the bible's stories ridiculous as well. in context to the god they're connected to, they don't make sense.

"The Bible" does not promote or condone incest. If you believe it does so explicitly, be sure to provide quotes. Genesis implies that it happened - but so does certain evolutionary hypotheses.

if the bible doesn't condone incest, then why was the opportunity for it too happen ever presented? i don't have a problem with incest in terms of evolution because they were not advanced species that were performing this (still, when i say incest, immediate family is ruled out of this equation. animals have mechanims which stop them from producing with immediate family), with no realization of what they were doing. this is the opposite of the bible, knowing incest was always going to occur (the kind with immediate family which is practically murder) it was still allowed to happen.

History does not always reflect a present we take for granted. Incest is negative because of accumulated genetic "defects". Today, you start to get problems by about the third generation, but considering the age of humanity, and that first generations would have been from a "pure" gene-pool, negative mutations wouldn't occur until after a few generations. After the third generation, people would have had enough cousins to choose from.

no. you have the idea wrong. it doesn't matter how "pure" a gene pool is, it matters who the parents are. incest is not "accumulated genetic defects". your assumption of having enough cousins to safely reproduce with is way off as well. they all share the atleast half of the same genetic information and this is the problem. this post is already too long so i won't further elabourate.

At least two things can be said in response to this reproach. First, if the human race was propagated from a single pair, as we believe the evidence indicates, such closely related marriages were unavoidable. The demand for some other way of getting the race started is an unfair expectation.

i would like to see the evidence, and i would like to see a god, knowing that this would be the case, create a species from only two individuals (i'm gettin at the fact that he most definately would've created more).

 

[Jenyar]

Originally posted by atheroy
do you have no standards? what is the point of having an opinion if it is ill-informed? i wasn't questioning your right to an opinion, more, how can you have an opinion on something you yourself admit to having a lack of knowldge on? i don't respect that sorry.

All opinions are ultimately ill-informed (that is the strength of the agnostic argument). My opinions are subject to change as new information is acquired, just as yours.

i'm assuming you mean how does genetic information evolve (if i've assumed wrongly please tell me)? learning is incorrect as a term here. selection pressures are the key. i'm not completely sure this is what you are wanting me to give you examples of, so i'll stop here unless you say i'm on the right track.

Selection pressures can only affect genetic information that already exists - ineffective genes recede, while effective genes become dominanant. This is how I understand it (it could be inaccurate). But no "new" descriptive information is created, current ones are only adapted.

okay. i just have trouble with people stating god is omni(insert whatever you want in here), yet is inconsistent in his laws (among other things). our laws are subject to change because we advance technology, therefore have to regulate it accordingly. god never had to do this as he was already advanced, to the point of perfection. no more advancement. so i can see why we have these cushions, but i don't see why god should, as from the beginning he didn't need them, he just already knew. that's why most of the bible's stories ridiculous as well. in context to the god they're connected to, they don't make sense.

The laws were for our protection. We can only learn part of God's justice from them, but they do not "bind" God by themselves. A wise judge might make laws to help people decide between right and wrong in their situation, but in his own life he may only act according to his own just nature. This does not mean he will act lawlessly, though - a wise judge will have integrity.

God's laws would probably have shown more tolerance and love if the people showed better judgement. But the Bible shows us that a lot of them were hard-headed and had rather short memories.

if the bible doesn't condone incest, then why was the opportunity for it too happen ever presented? i don't have a problem with incest in terms of evolution because they were not advanced species that were performing this (still, when i say incest, immediate family is ruled out of this equation. animals have mechanims which stop them from producing with immediate family), with no realization of what they were doing. this is the opposite of the bible, knowing incest was always going to occur (the kind with immediate family which is practically murder) it was still allowed to happen.

The laws were meant to regulate a certain way of life - one that would protect the people, ensure their longevity and an acceptable relationship with God. As things became worse, people (and animals) adapted. The fact that people don't have that natural aversion, while animals do, should tell you something of their condition.

no. you have the idea wrong. it doesn't matter how "pure" a gene pool is, it matters who the parents are. incest is not "accumulated genetic defects". your assumption of having enough cousins to safely reproduce with is way off as well. they all share the atleast half of the same genetic information and this is the problem. this post is already too long so i won't further elabourate.

I will go with river-wind's explanation: that incest does not create genetic problems on its own, it just makes them way more likely. Read his post and tell me if you disagree. I only have high school biology, but it has something to do with recessive and dominant genes accumulating in the wrong places, rather than cancelling each other out. There would be mutations, but they would probably only cause different colour skin, eyes, facial features, etc. The possible negative effects would not have been nearly has potent as they are now. Adam and Eve (being created by God) were physically and genetically perfect. Genetic "mistakes" would at first only introduce variety, which is a good thing.

i would like to see the evidence, and i would like to see a god, knowing that this would be the case, create a species from only two individuals (i'm gettin at the fact that he most definately would've created more).

Adam and Eve did have more children. Adam lived 800 years, and Cain would only had to wait a while for a wife. By the time Abel was killed, other children might have been born (at least sisters, who aren't mentioned by name). We learn that we are guilty of sin by being descendents of Adam. If other "Adams" were created, they would have been unaffected by sin.