1003: "Hitler and Eve"

[Webzter]

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?

Because she's pretty much old enough to be my mom, not a knockout, and I could pull better. Oh, and my wife would kill me.

[Fire Brns]

2. We have Hardcore Athiest clapping like seals at any criticism of religion.

Really?

Also, that's not what Schrodinger's Cat means.

Not every atheist but yes, people are taking the comic as a challenge to criticise the genisis portion of the bible rather than enjoy or comment the joke as it is. I showed this comic to my friend the athiest and he said he has seen it a million times then promptly thanked me for wasting 30 seconds of his life.

It's an analogy and it kinda does: untill I have definitive proof of the creation of the universe it is both creationism and the big bang.

[markfiend]

my friend the athiest

I bet I'm athier than him.

[The Moomin]

On that note however, is necrophilia immoral?

As the dead won't be able to give consent, I suppose it's technically rape which is immoral.

*Edited so it looked how it was supposed to do. I don't know what I'm doing.

[Fire Brns]

my friend the athiest

I bet I'm athier than him.

True, none of my aitheist friends are in your face athiest, well there is one who is possibly athiest but nvmind...
But that's not the point: Don't challenge me, I know furries.

[doogly]

It's an analogy and it kinda does: untill I have definitive proof of the creation of the universe it is both creationism and the big bang.

I am not even beginning to address your understanding of cosmology, with its own flaws. I'm saying this is also an incorrect assessment of what Schrodinger's cat is about.

[Nergye]

I don't think anyone took the comic as an opportunity to bash Christianity, actually. They took what Kshrike said, either as a genuine viewpoint (which makes me sad, if true), or as trolling, as an opportunity to ridicule someone who thoroughly deserved it. It then progressed into a discussion of morality, with repeated returns to Kshrike's lack of understanding of how morality works, and possibly even what it is. And, as is the way with xkcd, it then moved on to genetics, and other things that are more interesting than trying to argue with dogmatic people over opinions that they're not interested in having challenged.

I don't even think there has been significant bashing of religion, in fact, unless you count the obligatory evidence of the bible being self-contradictory, which is hardly news. I don't claim that all atheists are level-headed, sensible, or intelligent - far from it. But the suggestions that atheists are using a comic which had a religious context as an excuse to put on their seal costumes and clap in between typing anti-religion propaganda are somewhat overblown. The xkcd forum has, I tend to opine, a higher-than-average contingent of the intelligent/sensible/level-headed subset of atheists, and indeed of the general population, and we don't all come here to bash people with differing opinions. Some of us come here to learn, to debate in a friendly and responsible manner, and to enjoy ourselves (where that doesn't already overlap with the previous two activities). So let's each have our own, fresh brush to be tarred with, eh?

Edit: I should probably quote the person/people I'm responding to, but I'm too lazy to try to find the posts now. I hereby give permission for anyone to read this post, if they so wish.

[PolakoVoador]

I believe I must have missed track of something, I have no idea why the poor undead cat is being cited in this thread

[TurkeyTail]

Does....does anyone want to enjoy the comic? Please....I'm all alone....

I really want to enjoy it, but I'm so confused. It makes me feel like Schrodinger's cat.

[Fire Brns]

It's an analogy and it kinda does: untill I have definitive proof of the creation of the universe it is both creationism and the big bang.

I am not even beginning to address your understanding of cosmology, with its own flaws. I'm saying this is also an incorrect assessment of what Schrodinger's cat is about.

I didn't take it as an adress to my understanding of cosmology. "with its own flaws." This I took offence to.
Schrodingers cat's purpose is not the cat and it's not the radioactive element that may kill said cat. It is that either possibility is true until you open the box and see that the cat is alive or dead or suffering from radiation posioning. While there is some evidence observable to the origin of the universe can you honestly say you know what happened without direct observation? And you ignored the part where I said it was an analogy.
I lost a very good friend (he was a creationist) by argueing the big bang, after that I decided it wasn't worth it to be try and be "right" all the time.

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

It's not that either is true, it's that both are true. The point is to show how ridiculous the whole damn thing is

[numerati]

incest between cousins was always quite common up until relatively recently, you would have thought that that would have weeded out a lot of the bad genes

With cousins It's still very common in a lot of near eastern cultures...as a student of Arabic told me, one practice phrase in the textbook was something like, "in fact, my brother in law also happens to be my cousin," which got the class buzzing but his professor said was pretty normal.

Later in the same book (Genesis), Abraham (and later his son with his own wife) have a perennial cowardice problem demonstrated by telling kings whose cities he's passing through that Sarah his wife is his sister, so the kings won't kill him and take her. The justification Abraham gives at one point is that it's a half-truth, because she really is his half sister. (20:12-13) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+20&version=NIV As far as the author is concerned, at that early point in history, the only moral problem seems to be the half-truth and the risk of adultery it creates, not the incestuous relationship itself, which is one of the most genealogically important and sacred marriages in the Abrahamic faiths. Still, brother-half-sister relationships (not to mention, obviously, the "Abel and Eve" variety) were banned later(Lev. 18). Some degree of endogamy seems to have been preferable in maintaining family identity in the new land (see Abraham making sure his son gets a wife from his own relatives back in the old country in Gen. 24).

It's interesting that in explaining the half-truth Abraham also claims calling herself his "sister" is supposed to be a sign of love, which may have stayed sexy in that culture, given it's a sort of pet name also used a lot for the bride in the Song of Songs.

It seems like a bit of a stretch how, as I recall, some evolutionary psychologists, in trying to counter sociology's and anthropology's cultural relativist assumptions, have listed "incest taboo" as one of the universals they see across cultures, maybe not totally inaccurate but much less clear-cut than we think.

[danicastone]

Others have pointed out already that there could have been other people for these kids to make babies with.

I remember reading a neo-Pagan essay once about how we were "the other people" in the Bible. It was surprisingly easy to dig up again: http://www.paganlibrary.com/fundies/other_people.php

Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference: (Genesis 1:26) The [Elohim] said, "Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth." Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated "Gods" or "Pantheon." (1: 27) The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and female they created them. (1:28) The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."

Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people.

The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it: (Gen 2:7)

...

Now Eden, according to (Gen. 2:14-15), was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve. i.e: the Pagans.

Even without a raging Pagan reading of the Bible, if you skim through that part of the text (as I just did) it's pretty plainly laid out that he goes to the "land of Nod", "East of Eden", gets a wife THERE, has a son named Enoch, and cetera.

[PolakoVoador]

It's an analogy and it kinda does: untill I have definitive proof of the creation of the universe it is both creationism and the big bang.

I am not even beginning to address your understanding of cosmology, with its own flaws. I'm saying this is also an incorrect assessment of what Schrodinger's cat is about.

I didn't take it as an adress to my understanding of cosmology. "with its own flaws." This I took offence to.
Schrodingers cat's purpose is not the cat and it's not the radioactive element that may kill said cat. It is that either possibility is true until you open the box and see that the cat is alive or dead or suffering from radiation posioning. While there is some evidence observable to the origin of the universe can you honestly say you know what happened without direct observation? And you ignored the part where I said it was an analogy.
I lost a very good friend (he was a creationist) by argueing the big bang, after that I decided it wasn't worth it to be try and be "right" all the time.

Actually, it is that your observation of things may possibly change the states of said things, when things are really smaller than a cat.

[boothby171]

Here we go! The "Top Six Incestuous Relationships in the BIBLE!"

http://listverse.com/2008/05/26/top-6-i ... the-bible/

Soooo......

According to many Christians, morality is DEFINED by the Bible.

If, in the Bible, God hisself recommends incestuous relationships, then incestuous relationships must therefore be moral.

I am an atheist.

Therefore: I, an atheist, have proven that incest is moral. For a given--though fully recognized--category of "moral" (what more can one do?)

QED (Quite Easily Done)

[Jonesthe Spy]

Yeah, Genesis is an interesting mashup of three or four different creation myths, with the the montheist Yahweh stuff being tacked on to earlier poltyheistic stories. I really don't understand how any modern reader can possibly actually READ the text (as opposed to just pulling a few quotes that confirm their biases) and not realize how completely contradictory it is.

[Fire Brns]

It's not that either is true, it's that both are true. The point is to show how ridiculous the whole damn thing is

I can argue that the fact that both creationism and evolution are accepted in society could show that both are true.

it is that your observation of things may possibly change the states of said things

And I dislike this whole pretense that the only things that are true are what we observe or that every happens simply because we observe it.

Furthermore analogies are not meant to be perfect so nitpicking at them does not prove you correct. Attack something else in my original statement besides an imperfect analogy?

[neoliminal]

Assertions:

1. Adam and Eve existed.
2. God doesn't exist.

What would be required for these two seemingly inconsistent things to be true?

Two incestuous, narcissistic people with delusional ideations of communications with higher beings and a strong oral history tradition.

So I can thankfully still believe in Adam and Eve without believing in God.

[Fire Brns]

Assertions:

1. Adam and Eve existed.
2. God doesn't exist.

What would be required for these two seemingly inconsistent things to be true?

Two incestuous, narcissistic people with delusional ideations of communications with higher beings and a strong oral history tradition.

So I can thankfully still believe in Adam and Eve without believing in God.

Now this is funny.

[danicastone]

I know the whole discussion of incest in this thread started from the trollish challenge to prove that incest is moral. I never understood the challenge itself. Partly... was it going to demonstrate something about sexuality? What was the point again?

But partly because the morality or amorality of incest is not the point, overall, with incest. A few people here have pointed out that, generally, the larger problem with incest is that it is rarely if ever going to be consensual. And there has been a lot more discussion of the potential genetic problems with incest, and the possibility that that is what made it taboo in the first place.

From the point of view of an incest survivor - and I do know that experiencing that as a child must be different than experiencing it as an adult, in a lot of ways - all of the genetic and moral stuff is way beside the point. Being raped by your immediate family certainly fucks you up, and I would wager that doing it with your immediate family, consensually, as an adult, would also fuck you up - possibly less, probably differently.

It's not a moral thing; we know it's not a moral thing, because we have now done enough studies and heard from enough survivors that we know that it fucks you up even if it happens well before you have any concept of morality, even if you're raised by people who don't have that moral concept, even if it happens before you have language or reliable long-term memory for pete's sake. Morality is social and sociological. This is hard-wired psychological stuff. The Westermarck effect is a good example of that; it's not moral, it's a universal piece of How Humans Work.

Morality is hugely beside the point here.

[PolakoVoador]

Furthermore analogies are not meant to be perfect so nitpicking at them does not prove you correct. Attack something else in my original statement besides an imperfect analogy?

I was not attacking anything, I was just correcting your explanation of what our beloved Zombie Cat Analogy really means

[erik65536]

Proponents of religion do more to discredit their beliefs than their opponents do. Many are unwilling to accept that any aspect of their beliefs can be false, and refuse to accept overwhelming proof to the contrary. At the time the events of the bible took place, no one understood the mechanics of the world as we do today. Even if the original stories contained no flaws, they were invariably altered by numerous translations and retellings afterwards.

Adam and Eve is one of the oldest stories in the bible. Who knows how it actually happened. Maybe animal humans naturally evolved. Adam, Eve, and their descendants were the first humans with souls. When we learn something new, it is necessary to reinterpret what we thought we knew before.

But wait?! You’re just taking science and introducing your own biasness! That is a fair argument, but science is about making observations and coming up with the mechanics behind them not the meaning behind them. Anyone who tries to argue for or against religion is introducing their own bias, because it is either not observation based or is so far unobservable. You can only make weak arguments either way. The strongest position is “I don’t know, but for now I am going to assume...”

EDIT: When I saw Adam and Eve I thought there would be a reference to the adult toy store.

[lalop]

i DO would let police search my house just like that, because i have nothing to hide.

This may sound like a troll question, but in fact it's very legitimate: how do you know you have nothing to hide? There are literally tens of thousands of laws on the books, as well as an untold number of precedents that determine exactly how those laws are enforced. Bills regularly pass that contain hundreds of pages, which many of the politicians do not even read in full. The effect is multiplied for your individual state, county and town.

Of course, it's conversely possible that, in a state with no privacy whatsoever, the people would be more hesitant about passing so many complicated and/or stupid laws. (In the actual state of affairs, the right to privacy provides an incentive not to care which laws get passed, and so we get what we have today.) However, this is not the nation you currently live in.

[Volbla]

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.

Indeed, but to be fair that wasn't Lot's doing, it was his daughters. Come to think of it, doesn't this scene qualify as rape as well?

I didn't get this comic before i had it explained to me, because i had forgotten about the whole "Adam and Steve" thing. It's nice not living in America sometimes.

[doogly]

It's not that either is true, it's that both are true. The point is to show how ridiculous the whole damn thing is

Yeah, and it's a really strange sort of "both." It's certainly not about ignorance; 1 or 1. It's not the classical both, 1+1. It's like, (1/sqrt(2) , 1/sqrt(2)). There is something going on here.

[Gumbril]

It's not a moral thing; we know it's not a moral thing, because we have now done enough studies and heard from enough survivors that we know that it fucks you up even if it happens well before you have any concept of morality, even if you're raised by people who don't have that moral concept, even if it happens before you have language or reliable long-term memory for pete's sake.

People who found the experience of having sex with a sibling or parent positive must be silent because the law and society would punish them and/or their lover severely. Granted, violating a taboo can be traumatic in itself, but the testimony of "survivors" of homosexuality, for example, is hardly evidence of harmfulness of that practice. (Raping kids and raping relatives, is of course very wrong, but incest isn't rape)

[Uzh]

you never know, maybe this event was the motive for Cain's murder of his brother.

"you slept with mum? how could you! you must die!"

Or: "You slept with mum? She was mine! You must die!"

[Maurog]

Wait, why is incest considered immoral anyway?

If it all comes down to intercourse between consenting adults, then there are no victims, and you know what they say about victimless crimes...
Are we just maintaining taboos for the sake of tradition?

[heavywater]

Anyone who tries to argue for or against religion is introducing their own bias, because it is either not observation based or is so far unobservable. You can only make weak arguments either way. The strongest position is “I don’t know, but for now I am going to assume...”

This is why I find it so bizarre that so many logical people self-identify as atheist. I'm an agnostic atheist, I find the idea of a deity (or deities) so unfathomably unlikely that I rarely entertain the concept. However, logically speaking, the existence of a deity is unknowable until it is known to be true. We can't disprove the existence of an omnipotent being without ourselves being omnipotent. The out-of-hand rejection of the possibility of deities by atheists is... peculiar.

As for taboos, why is rape immoral? In the animal kingdom it's incredibly commonplace. I find it abhorrent but I've no doubt that's due to societal pressures rather genetic predispositions.

[PolakoVoador]

Are we just maintaining taboos for the sake of tradition?

That's what we call "Culture"

[Ermes Marana]

At first it was funny because of the play on "Adam and Steve".

But then the incest made it too gross to be funny. The comic would actually work with any name in place of Abel (the joke isn't based on incest), but unfortunately there was nobody else around. Otherwise it could be "It's Adam and Eve, not Armando and Eve!"

[meerta]

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...

'Just like...' - isn't this disgusting homophobia? Why aren't people calling this out?

[J Thomas]

Also, that's not what Schrodinger's Cat means.

It's an analogy and it kinda does: untill I have definitive proof of the creation of the universe it is both creationism and the big bang.

No, that's all wrong.

Some people believe in a weird two-valued logic. Any statement has to be either true or else false.

It's far more sensible and still very simple to use a four-valued logic. Any statement is true, or false, or undetermined, or contradictory.

If it's true, no problem. If it's false, no problem. If it's undetermined still no problem, but undetermined is not the same as true. If it's contradictory there's a big problem and the statement is not stated sensibly.

Some people believe in a form of creationism that contradicts big bang theory. They can't both be true. They are both indeterminate at the moment, though.

Schodinger's cat is not alive and dead both. It's indeterminate. At least, it makes sense that way, while it doesn't make sense to say it's both.

[jalohones]

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

'Just like...' - isn't this disgusting homophobia? Why aren't people calling this out?

So I thought, but then KShrike challenged me to have sex with my mum to prove incest moral. I took that to mean that s/he was kinda fine with the lesbianism.

[jjcote]

...you would probably be shocked to find that you are interested in your, say, 17th cousin.

Funny story... my wife and I have been doing a ton of genealogical research for the past year and found out over Christmas vacation that we have a common ancestor roughly 600 years back. We're ~21st cousins.

See? This is why you should compare genealogies with your potential mate prior to mating!

A relationship that distant is interesting. Knowing what we now know about genetics, what is the probability that you and your 21st cousin wife have any genetic material in common? If I'm doing the math right, by 5th cousin, the chances of a shared chromosome drops to less than 50%. This makes the notion of "related" be entirely social/cultural, and you would actually share more with someone from a family that had lived in the same town/region/country as your family for some number of generations.

[Fire Brns]

A relationship that distant is interesting. Knowing what we now know about genetics, what is the probability that you and your 21st cousin wife have any genetic material in common?

They would only share about 99% of their DNA which is acceptable for the propogation of genetic diversity.

[Frungi]

And I dislike this whole pretense that the only things that are true are what we observe or that every happens simply because we observe it.

No, no, he was talking about Schrödinger’s cat. It was a thought experiment meant to demonstrate that quantum physics is really weird, specifically the fact that the state of things changes by being observed. Observation doesn’t make it true; observation causes the outcome.

That aside, in science, things can only be accepted as truth if they can be sufficiently observed to be true. Bit of an oversimplification, but you get the point.

[keithl]

If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
--- Robert Silverberg

[The Moomin]

Others have pointed out already that there could have been other people for these kids to make babies with.

I remember reading a neo-Pagan essay once about how we were "the other people" in the Bible. It was surprisingly easy to dig up again: http://www.paganlibrary.com/fundies/other_people.php

Right," I say. "It's all in your Bible." And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference: (Genesis 1:26) The [Elohim] said, "Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth." Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated "Gods" or "Pantheon." (1: 27) The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and female they created them. (1:28) The Gods blessed them, saying to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth."

Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people.

The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it: (Gen 2:7)

...

Now Eden, according to (Gen. 2:14-15), was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. "East of Eden," therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the "other people" who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve. i.e: the Pagans.

Even without a raging Pagan reading of the Bible, if you skim through that part of the text (as I just did) it's pretty plainly laid out that he goes to the "land of Nod", "East of Eden", gets a wife THERE, has a son named Enoch, and cetera.

The Land of Nod is near Bridlington, which lies to the East of Eden Camp. We can go check the marriage records.

[Azkyroth]

On that note however, is necrophilia immoral?

As the dead won't be able to give consent, I suppose it's technically rape which is immoral.

*Edited so it looked how it was supposed to do. I don't know what I'm doing.

Gym socks aren't able to give consent either.

The question, again is "who does it hurt?"