1003: "Hitler and Eve"

[StClair]

"... but he loved his mother!"

[kardo]

This crosses a line and yet...
Brings up a very good point. Just like "Adam and Steve", "Abel and Eve" is also immoral, probably even more immoral.

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral. Go! (No, I'm not trolling)

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

Morality is a matter of social convention. My inner morality, as well as social convention tells me that incestuous are immoral, so I have no desire to "proof" that incest is moral.

Social conventions can change though. See the moral stance on homosexuality, racism, slavery and human dissections.

[tenkai]

My mind went straight to Abel from Street Fighter 4.

[Coyne]

I love cynics who think they are so smart, and how numerous they are on the internet. It means that it's pointless to argue with them, because they are already so twisted that they cannot possibly be reasoned with.

It takes one to know one: Certainly no one can reason with you.

[tetsujin]

If having sex with your mother is offensive than it can't possibly be moral.

Bullshit. "It's icky and therefore wrong" is a flawed argument. You know what else is icky? Surgery. Seeing someone else's insides (let alone my own) just creeps me right out. Therefore, by your logic, it is wrong.

[tetsujin]

I was thinking Adam was upset because someone switched from using the Los Angeles Police Dept. phonetic alphabet "Adam", "Boy", "Charles", ... to the U.S. military phonetic alphabet "Able", "Baker", "Charlie",.... But I guess not.

Intertesting... The one I'm familiar with goes "Alpha Bravo Charlie"... Not "Able Baker"... Well, I'd bet lots of variations have been used over the years...

[ocean_soul]

I'm back. Time to prove a point:

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral.

Who gets to define 'moral'?

Have sex with your mother. Right now.
Come back to me once you have done it, and tell me that you were brave enough to do this thing that just CAN'T POSSIBLY be immoral.

I don't think that answers the question...

[Kain]

I was thinking Adam was upset because someone switched from using the Los Angeles Police Dept. phonetic alphabet "Adam", "Boy", "Charles", ... to the U.S. military phonetic alphabet "Able", "Baker", "Charlie",.... But I guess not.

Intertesting... The one I'm familiar with goes "Alpha Bravo Charlie"... Not "Able Baker"... Well, I'd bet lots of variations have been used over the years...

I thought "Alpha Bravo Charlie" was only used in Aviation... Of course, I could be completely off.

Kshrike, do you think every athiest/agnostic thinks that incest is moral? Moreover, do you think that we don't differentiate, say, between a case like a parent/child where the power dynamic is highly imbalanced and say, two cousins who are not being influenced by their family?

I honestly would like to know, as while I don't think I will ever quite understand your mindset, I would like to see if I can at least understand what you understand about us.

[ocean_soul]

This crosses a line and yet...
Brings up a very good point. Just like "Adam and Steve", "Abel and Eve" is also immoral, probably even more immoral.

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral. Go! (No, I'm not trolling)

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

The bible contradicts itself on the morality or lack thereof of incest. Adam and Eve had kids. Who did those kids have kids with? Their siblings. Who did those kids have kids with? Probably their siblings or cousins.
Then their second cousins, third, fourth, fifth, nth.
And for a non-biblical viewpoint on incest, we are all related via an uncountable number of common ancestors. But we don't call it incest. If you could magically see someone's ancestors, you would probably be shocked to find that you are interested in your, say, 17th cousin.

There is a huge difference.
Refer to my recent post. (still not trolling)

A sidenote: if it states in a post that the poster is not trolling, does this mean he isn't?

[Readout]

Just a quick note: Biblically, Cain found a wife in the land of Nod (Genesis 4:16). No incest required, just a complete undercutting of the whole "only creating two people" thing.

[OP Tipping]

I didn't find this very funny...

[Buffalo Bill]

Wow, so much heat.

I loved this one. Wickedly funny. And now the wasps are out of the nest, busily nesting each other's quotes.

[Jared the Great]

There is a difference.
It is still God's creation.
Whereas when we clone it is not.

Of course, I just couldn't resist the Asimov reference.

Also, I'm Christian, and I don't hold that part of the Bible to be literal. In defense of those who do, I'd like to point out that it's not stated by whom Adam's kids had kids. God may have created other humans as well, or may have designed them so that incest was not a problem for the first $n$ generations, or whatever.

Also also, Abel isn't recorded to have had any kids. But yeah, I get it, "Seth and Eve" doesn't sound like "Adam and Eve".

If you only consider certain parts of it to be literal, how do you decide which parts?

[ocean_soul]

... unlike Adam and Eve themselves, of whom it is written:

Oh give me a clone,
of my own flesh and bone,
with the Y-chromosome changed to X...

There is a difference.
It is still God's creation.
Whereas when we clone it is not.

Do you really believe this stuff? I'm kind of curious. I've often wonderd why people believe things like the Bible. Do you have rational reasons for it or is it just gut feeling?

[Frungi]

I'm back. Time to prove a point:

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral.

Who gets to define 'moral'?

Have sex with your mother. Right now.
Come back to me once you have done it, and tell me that you were brave enough to do this thing that just CAN'T POSSIBLY be immoral.

You’re… not very bright.

I don’t say this because you’re a creationist. I’m a creationist, as is my family. I say this because you’re not very bright.

[pareidolon]

Hey Randall, I think you should really get to work on developing a soap opera here. It's title: Eve.

[Kanonfutter]

When I read the comic, I did not find it really funny.

Then first page mentioned the Adam and Steve slogan, and I realized that while maybe not funny, the comic was pretty clever. Incest is borderline on taboo, but so is religion anyway (said the Dane). YMMV.

I would have liked to write something clever and conciliatory on the Christian vs Atheist debate, but deleted it because it did not work out.

[TheSingingNerd]

I had an different initial reaction to the comic, and what Adam was walking in on:

Given that Abel was the first child ever born naturally, Adam may have walked into the birthing process. Adam wouldn't have seen a human birth before, and could justifiably be a little angry that another human male was halfway inside his wife's vagina. Surprise!

(Doesn't explain why he decided to call the new human male "Abel" when he yelled at him, but I assume that was an error when the comic was translated into English)

[RabidRabbit]

A sidenote: if it states in a post that the poster is not trolling, does this mean he isn't?

No, it doesn't. (definitely not trolling)

[bitwiseshiftleft]

If you only consider certain parts of it to be literal, how do you decide which parts?

The idea is to try to determine what genre something is, what influenced it, who wrote/told it and why, in order to figure out how to interpret it. For example, up through the flood at least is "myth" -- not meaning falsehood per se, but poetic origin stories with larger-than-life, one-sided characters and lots of divine action, intended primarily to teach something other than history (or science, for that matter). For example, I've heard it said that Gen 1 is a recast of the Babylonian Enuma Elysh, with major differences that emphasize Jewish theology: light is holy, time is holy, they exist apart from the Sun and Moon, primal forces are created and not gods, etc. This form of myth ends around Abram, who lives an almost realistic amount of time and has something of a real personality. I'm not sure how historically the next part (tribal histories) should be taken, but I'd guess the answer is "largely".

Note that there are many literary forms in the Bible: myth (Genesis), law (Leviticus), census data (parts of Numbers), hero stories (Judges), poetry (Psalms), philosophy (Ecclesiastes), morality plays (Job), history (Kings), erotica (Song of Solomon), personal accounts (Nehemiah), letters, apocalypse, prophecy, etc. Also note that prophecy, while perhaps containing the very words of God, is as much poetry and social commentary as it is predictions of the future.

The most important books for Christian faith are the Gospels. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and especially Luke) are written as eyewitness reports. They are not fiction, at least not in a modern sense, though they could of course be lies or exaggerated, or the apostles might have been brilliantly deceived. John is more of a theology book, so it should be read more as theology than as historical truth. So it's not especially problematic that the stories in John are in a different order, that Jesus' speech sounds different and so on, because the book is not a biography.

[Kibate]

Go eat a live banana slug. Right now. If you won't do it, eating slugs must be an inherently immoral act.

Fallacious...

Yup. Just as fallacious as the argument that inspired it. Which is built on essentially the same premise as "If you have nothing to hide, you have no reason not to let the police search your house."

This might go slightly off topic, but even though i agree with you on your slug example and what you said before, i DO would let police search my house just like that, because i have nothing to hide. If i trust in the goverment, which at the moment i do(enough to trust police at least) i see no reason why not. Privacy? Those police guys are some random fellas you never see again, and they search houses on a weekly basis, do you really think they care about your hidden sex toys to tell all your friends and the internet about it just to emberass you? Oh please. Heck, i would even let them monitor me 24/7, because i really do have nothing to hide and they would just get bored watching some random nobodys life who is a as good as a person can be(which is not really hard to be)

[Ekaros]

If we consider god made Adam perfect and Eve was also. And consider micro-evolution did take place in later time there wasn't really too much biological issue with incest. As there wasn't yet too many genetic issues between them.

Now, I'm not considered about Adam and Eve, but with Noah and his immediate family, at the time there already had been some strange stuff going, considering the other gods and such... Bible is contradictory in many places...

[Yla]

I once read a (Contemporary Fantasy) novel which claimed that Eve is the mother of Cain's children.

[The Moomin]

Was this pre or post Abel being murdered?

Edit to include:

I had an different initial reaction to the comic, and what Adam was walking in on:

Given that Abel was the first child ever born naturally, Adam may have walked into the birthing process. Adam wouldn't have seen a human birth before, and could justifiably be a little angry that another human male was halfway inside his wife's vagina. Surprise!

(Doesn't explain why he decided to call the new human male "Abel" when he yelled at him, but I assume that was an error when the comic was translated into English)TheSingingNerd

Abel was the younger of Adam's two sons?

[J Thomas]

Have sex with your mother. Right now.
Come back to me once you have done it, and tell me that you were brave enough to do this thing that just CAN'T POSSIBLY be immoral.

Or, to paraphrase, "If you won't do it right now then it can't possibly be moral."

I didn't say it is impossible for incest to be immoral, nor did I ask you to commit anything that I consider to be an offensive act. I asked a question which I consider a fair one, given that you invited a discussion of morality. Your respone of "Go have sex with your Mum!" doesn't really do much to strengthen whatever your argument actually is.

If having sex with your mother is offensive than it can't possibly be moral.
Better yet. Tell me WHY you would never have sex with your mother. Is it social? Is it some sort of inner moral standards? Is it because you are told not to?

Go eat a live banana slug. Right now. If you won't do it, eating slugs must be an inherently immoral act.

Fallacious...

You say you aren't a troll. But you behave exactly like a troll. There's no way an outside observer can tell the difference. So your idea of what a troll is, must involve how the troll feels inside. Probably you feel like a troll just plays with his victims, he says outrageous things just to get them outraged and then he sits back and chuckles that he can affect them so much. But it turns out that sincere people can troll each other, they each feel compelled to speak out and state their sincere positions which enrage the other. And there is no way either of them can tell that the other is not a troll, because a "real" troll would pretend to be just as outraged as the sincere victim. So -- with no intention to -- people victimize each other. As L Ron Hubbard said, we are all of us victims and victims of victims.

My response to you then should be independent of whether you are really a troll or not. There is no possible way I can tell the difference, so I must either guess which it is and respond according to my guess, likely getting it wrong, or else respond in a way that's appropriate regardless of whether you're sincere. Walking away is one method that's appropriate either way. Nobody owes you a reply.

You have asked a fundamental question. What is morality and how do we know?

Fearless above suggested that morality depends on predicted consequences. It's immoral to do things that will hurt people. By this standard, to be sure you're doing the right thing you need to know the entire future history of the human race. The effects of your actions will reverberate throughout the future, and how do you know which consequences will be more important? So for example, there are probably things you could do which would further development of alternative energy. It's possible if we don't get adequate alternative energy we will inevitably get into a genocidal war where 90% of humanity is killed. Maybe the most important thing you can do in the next 20 years is whatever furthers alternate energy. However, we might be heading toward an ecological catastrophe. Maybe there's no way the earth can sustain 7 billion people. If you do something that prevents a catastrophe where 90% of humans die, the long-run consequences may be much worse.

The most important decisions of your life have consequences you do not know and cannot predict well at all. So I say this is an utterly inadequate basis to decide morality. And yet we have an ethical obligation to do what we can toward good consequences, even though we cannot know what will happen.

If we can't judge by results because we don't know the results, should we base our morality on things people told us? People who know even less about results? Obviously not.

Maybe you should do the right thing completely independent of results. Like, if you do the right thing and it has horrible results, at least you can say you did the right thing. The results weren't your fault because you did the right thing. If you do something that results in everybody in the world dying, and humanity goes extinct along with a million other species, but it was the right thing, then nobody should complain about it afterward. Probably somebody else was involved who did the wrong thing, and that makes it all their fault.

If you don't know what to do, but you believe somebody knows better, then you should follow whoever you think has the best advice. If God told somebody else what you should do, but God did not tell you, then you should believe the guy that you believe gets the inside info from God. What if you're wrong? What if that guy didn't get his info from God but somebody else did? You have to make a choice, and decide who you think is the real prophet. Unless God tells you personally who to believe, you just have to do the best you can. Why would God put you in a position where you go to Hell if you believe the wrong prophet and there's no way for you to know which is which except by your own judgement? I don't know. I'm not God. But Jesus said you'll know them by their fruits, which to my understanding goes back to judging by results.

For myself, I take a more pragmatic view. It doesn't matter why people believe in a morality. The fact is, people do believe in various moralities, and they punish minorities who disagree. We must live with that fact. If you do something that the large majority of people disagree with, you will face bad consequences. So don't do it. If people get offended when you pay them with your left hand, then don't pay them with your left hand. If they think it's immoral to wear clothing in warm weather, then strip. Or go somewhere else. There's no point arguing with them whether their morality is right because they hate being trolled.

More and more, the USA is being taken over by a libertarian philosophy which says it's immoral to enforce morality on anybody unless you can prove that they hurt other people. How will they enforce that morality? I shudder to think.... Will it collapse under the weight of its own contradiction? Probably not for a long time -- lots of other contradictory moralities haven't. You disagree so you want to argue that your morality is right and theirs is wrong. Good luck with that. When they come after you, remember you have the defense that you aren't hurting anybody but yourself. Maybe it will help.

[AvatarIII]

Eve was made from Adam's rib, so you could say that Eve is his opposite-sex clone.

I was reading the other day, that apparently, since humans are rare within mammals by being without a baculum, (or penis bone), that it is theorised that Eve was created from Adam's baculum, since the Hebrew translation of rib in the bible is actually more like "bony part".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum#Cu ... gnificance

[Azkyroth]

This crosses a line and yet...
Brings up a very good point. Just like "Adam and Steve", "Abel and Eve" is also immoral, probably even more immoral.

"Adam and Steve" is immoral? Really? Who does it hurt?

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral.

Actually, in my experience, atheists usually insist that incest, even between consenting adults, is in fact immoral, using arguments that are obviously specious if identical reasoning is applied to anything less ICKY (IE, "parents still have more power than even adult children [but relationships between consenting rich people and poor people are fine and we don't assume that, say, children are unable to meaningfully consent to buy a car from their parents because of this power imbalance]," "birth defects [but they're against eugenics otherwise, and let's just pretend that all sex is hetero PIV and contraceptives don't exist]", etc.). I find it amusing that you suppose atheists wouldn't be against it, simply because it's taboo. In a kind of sick, sad way.

However, most people instinctively avoid incest because of the Westermark effect (google it) even in the absence of social convention, which tends to develop anyway.

But for people who, for whatever reason, aren't discouraged from having sex with relatives by these factors (siblings being raised apart, for instance, kills the Westermark effect, and there's a documented "reverse" phenomenon where such siblings are often shocked to be highly attracted to each other, possibly due to their bodies interpreting similarity as compatibility)...

Where both partners are consenting adults, and with contraceptives or appropriate genetic screening...

Well, again, who does it hurt?

[Azkyroth]

TL;DR: "EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW" is not a moral argument.

[EDIT]
Also, "well, if you don't think it's immoral then do it!" is a ridiculous argument. Despite my grumbling, I don't think the voluntary ingestion of jalapenos or the routine wearing of shirts without pen-holding pockets is immoral either, but that doesn't mean I want those things for myself.

Are you really so blinkered you can't imagine "moral" as anything except in terms of actions that are either compulsory or forbidden for everyone?

[J L]

This crosses a line and yet...
Brings up a very good point. Just like "Adam and Steve", "Abel and Eve" is also immoral, probably even more immoral.

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral. Go! (No, I'm not trolling)

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

Back to your original post. I don't think it was *ever* the question of this strip whether incest was "moral" or not -- surely Randall didn't want to say "hey, it gets even worse than homosexuals". That was your reading all along.

As for the question, moral is a made-up thing. Very useful, but man-made nevertheless. As far as I know, people who grow up with each other usually don't develop a sexual interest in each other (sorry, no sources at hand to back this up). So incest wouldn't be "the way things usually turn out". But that's not the same as morality. It has been sanctioned under certain circumstances in some societies (like ancient Egypt), and it has been banned and forbidden by law in most, but that's still not the same as morality. As long as nobody can come up with a nice and crisp definition of "right" and "wrong", this argument is pointless.

Also, since you have already started to call people in this thread idiots, I'm sorry to inform you that you are, in fact, a troll.

[J L]

However, most people instinctively avoid incest because of the Westermark effect (google it) even in the absence of social convention, which tends to develop anyway.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for (Wikipedia says it's 'Westermarck', but anyway)

[jalanb]

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

What you gives you the right to escalate from "I don't find it funny" to "it is not funny" ?

Why do you deny me (or Randall) the right to decide our own sense of humour?

[Azkyroth]

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

What you gives you the right to escalate from "I don't find it funny" to "it is not funny" ?

Why do you deny me (or Randall) the right to decide our own sense of humour?

You're talking to someone who thinks that being an atheist means being against any moral code society proposes, that gay relationships are immoral, that "well, if it's not immoral why don't you do it?" is a good rebuttal, that one can defeat the use of identical reasoning in a different situation to prove by example that the reasoning is indefensible by merely announcing "fallacious," that accusing random posters of rejecting societal taboos apropos of nothing and calling them "idiots" when they rebut him does not make him a troll...why wouldn't he expect himself to also have veto power over the concept of humor?

You must understand that he perceives the world very differently from you.

I mean, imagine a cuttlefish. No color vision, but it can see polarized light.

Now imagine it's tripping balls on a myristicin/PCP cocktail...

[markfiend]

This crosses a line and yet...
Brings up a very good point. Just like "Adam and Steve", "Abel and Eve" is also immoral, probably even more immoral.

I stand here right now and challenge every single atheist/agnostic in this thread to prove to me that incest is moral. Go! (No, I'm not trolling)

But Randall definitely crossed a line. Incest isn't a joking matter...

You prove that incest is immoral. The bible seems fine with it:

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father .And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

... and Peter calls Lot a "just" man in 2 Peter 2.

[rundlesm]

I don't Adam and Eve it!
I thought it was a reference to Cockney Rhyming slang.

[atrahasis]

The most important books for Christian faith are the Gospels. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and especially Luke) are written as eyewitness reports. They are not fiction, at least not in a modern sense, though they could of course be lies or exaggerated, or the apostles might have been brilliantly deceived.

The gospels can't agree with each other, never mind historical fact.

I recommend you do some reading outside the gospels to discover:

1. There is no historical record of any census that would cause the the Holy Family to travel to Bethlehem, it's a fiction to "prove" that Jesus was born of of house of David in the city of David.

2. Many of the historical figures said to coexist in the gospels lived years apart, with no overlap in their careers

There are many other inconsistencies, not to mention that basically all of the gospels were written well after the fact, supposedly based on a different source (referred to as the Q source, "Q" for "quaestio", given that no-one knows who it was or if it even exists).

They certainly aren't eyewitness accounts (though they're written to sound like they are -- another deception), and they're just the ones that the church selected from hundreds and edited to suit their needs.

Seriously, the Gospels are as much tripe as the Old testament, which itself is massively factually inaccurate, and not a "tribal history" to be taken as "largely" historical.

[AvatarIII]

However, most people instinctively avoid incest because of the Westermark effect (google it) even in the absence of social convention, which tends to develop anyway.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for (Wikipedia says it's 'Westermarck', but anyway)

Counter to that, there is an effect where close relatives separated before the Westermarck effect sets in, when reunited have increased sexual attraction to each other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction

[J Thomas]

This might go slightly off topic, but even though i agree with you on your slug example and what you said before, i DO would let police search my house just like that, because i have nothing to hide. If i trust in the goverment, which at the moment i do(enough to trust police at least) i see no reason why not. Privacy? Those police guys are some random fellas you never see again, and they search houses on a weekly basis, do you really think they care about your hidden sex toys to tell all your friends and the internet about it just to emberass you? Oh please.

How many times have you been involved with the police in this sort of interaction?

I have had a few such interactions, and here is my model of it:

Police have some power, but they are subject to public opinion. When civilians have a dispute the police must choose who to support and who to persecute, and somebody *will* be upset. Whoever is upset will look for any excuse to blame the police.

So the police have a strong incentive to defend themselves from propaganda attack. Anything they find that will tend to discredit any civilian during a dispute, is to their advantage. If they find you have sex toys that make you look immoral or ridiculous, then it is harder for you to complain about them. And if they have evidence to discredit you but no evidence to discredit the other guy, that gives them an incentive to decide in his favor. His complaint would carry more weight. Not that this would be the only thing they take into account. But they have limited time to find the truth of things, and wrapping things up in a way that doesn't inconvenience them is a factor.

In your example they search your house. Unless you called them in to investigate a crime committed in your house, they won't do that unless they think you have done something wrong. Probably somebody has given them a tip -- maybe you have some personal enemy -- and they are investigating it. They did not discount the tip, which they would do if they thought you were innocent (unless they were bored and had nothing better to do). When they search your house they have to figure you won't like it, and you might complain. They are doing it anyway. If they find something illegal then their search is justified. If they do not then you might make trouble for them. So there is a presumption of guilt. They think they will find something, and they are better off if they find something. This doesn't mean they'll plant evidence so they can arrest you, not usually. But you are in an adversarial relationship whether or not you believe you are.

You must let them search your house. Suppose they do not have a warrant. You have the legal right to refuse them until they get a warrant, but if you inconvenience them this way they will look for anything they can find to charge you with. It is safest to do that when you have in fact not done anything whatsoever that is illegal. And if you don't do that when you can get away with it, when will anybody maintain that right? You trust your police today; will you trust a different police force 20 years from now? If you don't keep your rights while you trust them, what rights will you have when they turn crooked?

Be polite. Be friendly, but not abject. They are doing their job, and you must cooperate to the extent of the law. You can cooperate further but they are not your friends and they may choose to use that against you. They can and will arrest you when you have done nothing wrong, if that makes it their job easier.

Heck, i would even let them monitor me 24/7, because i really do have nothing to hide and they would just get bored watching some random nobodys life who is a as good as a person can be(which is not really hard to be)

In a good world with great police, innocence is an adequate defense. In the world we actually have, police spend a lot of their time as bureaucrats. They do a lot of paperwork. And whatever they do generates a lot of complaints but not much praise. We have a complicated system that's designed to punish them if they ever get caught making a mistake, and 20 years of flawless service doesn't get them much of a break. Their best chance to evade punishment is not always to protect the innocent. Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't (sometimes) out to get you.

[Azkyroth]

The most important books for Christian faith are the Gospels. The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and especially Luke) are written as eyewitness reports. They are not fiction, at least not in a modern sense, though they could of course be lies or exaggerated, or the apostles might have been brilliantly deceived.

The synoptic gospels disagree on important details such as who Jesus first appeared to after being resurrected or what he said at his trial, but where they do agree, they agree exactly enough to be obvious plagiarisms. Additionally, at least one of them quotes words he supposedly said while the only other persons present were asleep. I mean, come on.

Various textual evidence dates them to around the end of the 1st century CE or the early 2nd century, not during the time Jesus would have lived. The historical evidence for an actual human figure of Jesus is poor to nonexistent. See here.

[rdi]

First time poster. lol

The way I understand it, Adam and Eve's kids incl the sons and daughters that only get a passing mention married each other. God creating woman as a helper for man, and the commandment of being fruitful and multiplying says something about God's intent for sexual unions (and if God made everything, He defines right and wrong). In the subsequently fallen world, there's nothing to preclude the descendants from having had other unions, oedipal or homosexual or whatever, the Bible doesn't say anything about it at this point, but it's not inconceivable that mankind's sexual desires weren't deviating from God's plan until later.

Over 2000 years later (according to the Bible's chronology), God declares brother-sister incest immoral, probably for the mutant baby issue. If mankind was created genetically flawless it'd take a while before harmful mutations would run the risk of becoming dominant. Dunno how long. Bro-sis unions might not have been a health concern early in the world if the Bible is to be believed when it says God saw that it was "very good". Seems consistent to me.

Hey, an xkcd comic that makes you think.

[TheEponymousBob]

Oh, would you Abel 'n' Eve it?