[quote="Regulus"]Serious questions:
If Adam and Eve were the first two humans, then why are there other, less sophisticated primates? Did they evolve from Adam and Eve? How can the human race be so diverse, if we all share the same two ancestors? Wouldn't we be almost genetic clones of each other, like cheetahs? And, hey, were do the Neanderthals come into this?[/quote]
The Bible does not really support the theory that homo sapiens descended from primates since God stated he created man in his image. Yes, there is theistic evolution which states religious thinking of God is compatible with the views of modern science, though non-theistic evolutionists reject the existence of a supernatural being and is more of personal opinions than established facts.
The diversity of the human race originate with Adam and Eve who gave birth to "many sons and daughters"; only those who are named in Genesis are Cain, Abel, and Seth. It's commonly accepted that the descendants of Adam and Eve's children were a result of incest, but as debated with Woeler, those were the only union partnerships possible at that time.
All of Genesis 5 records the genealogy of Adam with each generation having "many sons and daughters". It all comes to a head in Chapter 6, it states "human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, and the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose." After Noah's family came out of the ark after the Flood, in Genesis 9, it says "three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth." The descendents of the sons of Noah is quite complex to generalize so this article should explain the rest.
I'm not positively sure what to make of the Neanderthals, though I speculate that when the descendants of Japheth or the population that disperse after the Tower of Babel into modern-day western Europe and eastern Asia could have resulted with the Neanderthals. Genetic mutation through adapting their new environment created a difference 0.3% of DNA genome in them resulting in a genetic drift, and there we have the Neanderthals. You're free to call it a "theistic evolution" theory, though it's a confirmed fact that DNA is constantly adapting through sequences of mutations. And while we may not be genetic clones of each other, an article reports on a DNA survey that certifies that humans are 99.9 percent identical in DNA.
[quote="Regulus"]There's also the whole issue about us knowing that the Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years, and the bible completely disregarding all that, but that's a bit of a different issue that irks me. That's for another post. First things first, I want to hear responses to my above questions from someone who actually believes the bible is true.[/quote]
The Bible does not even regard the age of the Earth; it's the Young Earth creationists that believe the Earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
[quote="Woeler"]Humans are not perfect. God apparently is, yet we were created in his image. God doesn't like incest, yet he creates a species that practices it. He creates us sick and then orders us, on the pain of eternal torture to be well again.
Now of course we get the eternal ''but God gave us free will'' argument. Yes, apparently he did. Apparently he is so full of himself that he needs to be reminded everyday of how great a leader he is. How much we all love his celestial dictatorship. You either obey or you burn in hell. It's a bit like North-Korea, but at least you can F-ing die and leave North-Korea. Free will only makes matters worse.
And last, but not least. If God can take credit for the 'abuses in relationships' he prevented. He can also be take credit for all the wars, natural disasters, crusades, murders and rapes he didn't prevent.[/quote]
Well, hopefully, my argument will be a breath of fresh air. Yes, God gave mortal humans free will, though Satan corrupts God's free will given to us for his own purposes. The real answer is that the Bible plainly states the Earth is in possession of Satan. After the fall of man in the Garden, Satan apparently gained ownership of God's Creation. So we have our answer: evil is in the world because the devil rules the world. In 1 John 5:19, it states "We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." Elsewhere, in Ephesians 2, Satan is regarded as the "prince of the power of the air". And even Jesus recognizes Satan's hold on Earth, "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in me" (John 14:30).
So, every rape and murder in history has been done by humans through the corruption of the flesh/free will by Satan. As for secular wars, God left man in charge of taking the Earth, and some wars could have been prevented by our own governments. For instance, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave an appeasement to Adolf Hitler to avoid war letting him continue his polices of lebensraum, which resulted in the invasion of Poland. In the early 1940s, intelligence agencies in the United States had knowledge that the Japanese were planning to strike somewhere in the U.S., though they thought the Philippines would be the first target and widely underestimated Japanese aggression. Top officials in the Bush administration didn't act upon a classified memo that al-Qaeda was planning to attack the United States. While you may have a point about Christianity playing a role in religious conflicts such as the Crusades, you're overlooking one of the causes was the massacre of 3000 Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem by the Turks, and as a result, many deaths of Muslims was done in the name of Christianity in hope of restoring the Holy Land. That's where you have your point, although it seems both religions are to blame, not just one attributed to God. And while God may not prevent every natural disaster, what springs from it is human charity and compassion for those affected that are a result of God's goodness reflected through his believers that wish to help them. And may I correct God's "dictatorship": You either obey or don't obey. You just have to reap with you sow with both cases.
[quote="Woeler"]When was this again? 6000 years ago? 4000 years ago? Did the first human live when the Egyptians already learned how to read and write, or was it a bit later. Say in Sumerian times. How can anyone with a rational mind even begin to think this is true? And of course there were diseases. There were epidemics all over the human civilization. [/quote]
I'm pretty sure that last sentence was meant to come off as my own interpretation (which apparently was flawed), and not at all fact. I wasn't well aware of any possible diseases that could have occurred during Adam and Eve's lifetimes, and the first forms of medical tablets from the Library of Ashurbanipal date back to 7th century BC. The Epic of Gilgamesh was also stored there. Since Noah and Gilgamesh are implied to be the same person living in ancient Mesopotamia, Adam and Eve and their children were long dead. Any record of them (if there was) was long gone given the Library's tablets were barely saved in recent times, so I just decided natural causes killed them.
[quote="Woeler"]Any biology textbook (an actual confirmed source of knowledge) will teach anyone that humans didn't get much older than 50 before the last 4 centuries. It takes an extreme amount of anti-reasoning to believe that a human being lived up to an age over 150. 2000 year old books do not, at any given point overpower modern science. Never ever.
The bible is as much proof for Adam's existence as Charles Dickens is for the existence of living tin soldiers.[/quote]
[quote="Woeler"]Yes, those things are called tsunamis and earthquakes, and they are caused by plate-tectonics. There are again 2 possibilities here.
1. These things just happen due to the structure of the Earth.
2. There are tsunamis and earthquakes all over the world basically every day, but this very time it must have been god because bronze age people said so.[/quote]
You remember how I said earlier it was just a massive rainfall that caused the Flood. I was partially wrong.
[quote="Genesis 7:11-12"]When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights.[/quote]
There's the tsunamis right there.
[quote="Woeler"]If I ever do, I'll be sure to call a doctor.[/quote]
LOL!