Good morning. This time, I'd like to address the topic of Adam and Eve - and the "other people" in Genesis - because well, without "other people" being around at the same time, none of that story could make any kind of sense.
Seemingly pointing out the flaws and plot holes in the entirety of Genesis, starting with the purported creation of the first people - aka Adam and Eve, this argument has always been a contentious one, and unpopular with the apologists, critics of evolution, science (and also common sense).
According to whomever wrote Genesis, God created Adam (the first man) and Eve (the first woman). As a caveat, the Hebrew tradition added Lilith as the first woman some time later, as a predecessor to Eve. Lilith, Adam's erstwhile first wife, was made out to be "rebellious" and demanding to be equal to Adam - an offense for which she was cast out and portrayed as the "mother of demons" to provide religious justification for the oppression of women. Eve meanwhile, was all sweet, docile and compliant and very "trad"... sound familiar? But that's a topic for another time. My professor tells me I keep going down too many rabbit holes while writing, so I'm trying to avoid anything with long ears and bob-tails for a while, at least until I get the Ph.D. wrapped up! Moving on.
The Adam's Family Plot Holes: Why Genesis Needs a Better Continuity Editor
So, there we have Adam and Eve. They had kids - two sons mentioned by name, Cain and Abel. It's unclear if these two mythical characters had any others, because no details are given. We all know the story of Cain and Abel by now - even non-Christians know it, as well as they know Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Mouse/Fairy. Cain in a fit of jealous rage, murders his brother Abel, and instead of being angered by this "first murder", God protects Cain from "those who might find him and kill him" in retribution. Seemingly this "God" has no sense at all of justice - what about the unkind fate that befell Abel? This seemingly benign and loving "God" figure seems to make a habit of siding with oppressors, invaders and conquerors, doesn't he? Just ask the modern day state of Israel, who appears to be using that character flaw to its full colonizing and genocidal advantage - but I digress; side-stepped that rabbit hole - back to Genesis and its litany of logical fallacies.
From whom would God protect Cain? The coppers? Now hang on, this is supposed to be before civilization (isn't that what "B.C." really means? Just asking). His parents perhaps, outraged and grief-stricken by the horrific slaughter of their youngest son by their eldest? Or other people? Who knows? Adam and Eve were supposedly the first people after all, so where anyone else would've come from remains something of a knotty problem - something like a sticky mess involving wool blankets and hot toffee. Anyway, back to those mystery "other people" who just happen to be floating around and popping up on cue to make a particular scene make sense - like props in an improbable story full of plot-holes.
For one thing, the "Adam's Family" - as the "first humans" - are described as practicing agriculture - they were farmers. Meanwhile, the oldest known fossils of anatomically modern Homo sapiens - discovered alongside sophisticated stone tools in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco - date to roughly 315,000 years ago. The earliest definitive evidence of intentional plant cultivation and animal domestication appears in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East around 10,000 BCE to 9,500 BCE (roughly 11,500 to 12,000 years ago). The archaeological and chronological gap between the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens and the invention of agriculture is staggeringly vast. (Try to explain that away, apologists).
Sanitizing the Messy Bits: Incest, Ignorance, and Biblical Literalism
In keeping with this theme, Cain magically meets a girl and gets married. (Genesis 4:1-17): "Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch." The text mentions "Cain's wife" without any introduction or explanation of her origin. Some in the past suggested that since no other siblings were mentioned by name, perhaps Cain took one of his sisters as a wife - or bred with his own mother. After all, when one is a member of the only small nuclear family of the first human beings on Earth... when one detaches emotion, incest can be a survival mechanism to perpetuate the species - after all, wasn't Eve the only woman mentioned up to that point? That is, aside from Lilith of course. Ahem.
The alternative - especially to those believers more squeamish about messy things like incest - is to turn to logic for a change, out of sheer desperation - and to suggest that there must have been "other people" around at the same time. This of course invalidates the premise of the whole story while sanitizing it of all the "messy bits" that make puritans cringe... the same puritans who happily sell their own kids to pedophile rings and elect pedophiles to the highest office - whoops, another rabbit hole... again I digress. But this alone causes problems because no other people are mentioned in Genesis as existing outside of the Garden of Eden. What if there were other people outside the Garden? Separated from Adam and Eve? Well, then again, how would Adam and Eve be "the first"? Again, for "other people" to be of the correct age, they would have to have been around for the same length of time, calling into question the biblical claim that Adam and Eve were the first humans. Where did these other humans then come from?
Cain’s City and the Mystery Population: The Logistics of a "Four-Person" Planet
This conundrum is compounded by yet another point of contention, which is the building of Cain's City (also from Genesis 4:1-17): "Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch."
Building a "city" implies a population, far more than just Cain, his wife, and their child - which would barely qualify to be a hamlet, not a city. This too contradicts the veracity of Genesis since even if suggestions that Caine took one of his sisters for a wife - or bred with his mother (to discount the "other people existed" theory) there could in no way have been enough humans in existence - according to the historical perception of Creation - to have either built or inhabited a city at that time, even a small one. Yet it's logical to assume that there must have been other humans already in existence at or around the same time as "Adam and Eve" - implying that at the very least, Adam and Eve were not "created" alone (or in existence alone) which contradicts the veracity of Genesis as a plausible historic text.
In the face of the stone-cold logic that would dismiss the entirety of this bible story as the childish fantasy it very likely is, apologists and cult-members continue to defend it. Another branch of the argument would assert that Cain might have lived long enough for his offspring to have multiplied sufficiently to build and fill said city. This implies that he as an individual would've had to live around 300 years while his small family bred and multiplied incestuously to reach the size sufficient to realize that goal. Yes, I can see why biblical literalists assert that everything in the bible is literally true (sarcasm intended). Also, why the overwhelming majority of these seem to exist in the USA, where it seems that Common Sense and all its relatives have recently packed their bags and fucked off to greener pastures.
The average human life-span today is bobbing around 79 years, with increasing numbers of individuals reaching 100+. That's now - in the 21st century - with the benefits of modern knowledge and technologies applied towards prolonging the inevitable. These people assert that back in the stone age or bronze age, these fictional story characters reached ages of hundreds of years! And all without the benefits of any medicine! Oh right, because they had "God" to stave off decrepitude? Hmmm. Sounds very likely.
Unfalsifiable Fables: Polishing Turds of Muddy Logic in the Garden of Eden
Entering the world of academia has really broadened my horizons, I can tell you - it introduced me to the term "unfalsifiability". If you can't disprove something, it is "unfalsifiable". Now before you get any ideas that this is in any way a good thing, let me explain - I'll start with something suitable and familiar to both skeptics and apologists alike: If someone claims that God exists, that claim is unfalsifiable, because it can't be disproved. The celebrations of apologists tend to drown out the reality that they themselves cannot prove their claim either. Unlike a scientific claim like "gravity exists" for example, a metaphysical claim about "God", cannot be effectively tested. When a claim is unfalsifiable, it doesn't mean it is true; it just means it has been structured in a way that makes it immune to testing. Apologists and activists often celebrate unfalsifiability as a shield. They think, "Since you can't prove me wrong, I must be right!" This exposes the heart of a major logical fallacy: The appeal to ignorance (assuming something is true simply because it hasn't been proven false).
If someone claims God exists, the fact that a skeptic cannot disprove it is logically irrelevant. The skeptic does not have to prove a negative. The claimant still holds 100% of the responsibility to provide verifiable evidence to support their assertion. Shifting the burden of proof to the skeptic by saying "Well, you can't prove He doesn't exist!" is a logical evasion. An unfalsifiable claim is essentially a logical stalemate, not a victory.
Fell down a rabbit hole there that time. Whoops.
The Ultimate Logical Stalemate: Unfalsifiability and the Survival of Mystery Religions
The reason for the success of belief-based "mystery" religions therefore, is unfalsifiability. Without this principle, no religion - and especially not Christianity - could have survived beyond a few minutes of rational scrutiny.
Logically, the burden of proof always lies with the person making the positive assertion. This is the Gold Standard of Logic:
"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." — Christopher Hitchens.
Thus, when those convinced of the inerrancy of the Bible and Genesis assert with confidence that "Adam and Eve" were "the first humans", I wonder what all the "other people" around at the time must have thought about that.
Conclusion: The Historical Fallacies of Genesis 4
That said, the evidence for the divine creation of "Adam and Eve" is pretty thin - and the entire story is beleaguered by a stark separation from reality, relying on suspended disbelief. And of course, plot holes. Lots of them. Why any rational person would entertain this as anything more than a collection of childish fables laced with historical references, period wisdom - all thrown at a wall to see what would stick.
No credible scholar or historian would assert that the bible is in any way an accurate or historical text, but more of a collection of myths, fairytales and allegories - or if you will, chicken soup for the soul. (That alone seems to outrage the fundamentalists even more - I don't think they like soup very much).
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