Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

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John Bauer
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Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

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Post by John Bauer »

In the thread "Genetics and Adam and Eve," DrNoGods claimed that the creation narrative in Genesis describes Adam and Eve as the first humans. He said that
  • Adam and Eve have an "explicit role in the biblical creation myth as being the first humans."
  • "Their explicit role as the first humans [is] described in Genesis."
  • "According to the biblical creation myth there was (...) only two" people originally.
  • "Genesis very clearly does describe Adam and Eve as the first humans that this God created."
I would appreciate DrNoGods substantiating this claim of his, for I don't agree that Genesis says this. I would like to see this explored further.

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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #121

Post by brunumb »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:24 pm Again your belief does not equate to fact. Just because someone believes the moon is made of cheese does not mean that it is. And again the God of the Bible has been shown to exist in the God-man Jesus.
No. Your belief does not equate to fact. Just because someone believes the moon is made of cheese does not mean that it is.
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #122

Post by brunumb »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:24 pm Just look at the political systems of the world, communism which is based on a system without God, and democracy which was born out of the reformation and was and still is dependent on God.
I doubt that you could be more wrong if you tried.

Communism: a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

Democracy: a form of government in which the people have the authority to choose their governing legislation.

No gods needed, but I suspect that biblical Jesus would have approved of both systems.
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #123

Post by brunumb »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:24 pm No, the Earth does not have unlimited resources that is why God a world that can recycle the resources when they are used. He also gave man the creativity to increase the production of resources and to develop other resources. Take for example food. Plant growth will increase if more carbon dioxide would be added to the atmosphere and if the Earth warms then there will be more arable land.

So if you want to help the starving people around the world go burn down a tank of hydrocarbons. Maybe the Lord is going to wait to come back and is increasing the CO2 levels to feed the 20 billion people what will be on this planet and probably by that time under the ocean.
Oh dear Zeus! I hope that this patently unscientific and absurd view of fixing the world's food problems is only an eccentric view of a tiny minority. If not, we are most certainly doomed. My head is still spinning after read that.
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #124

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to brunumb in post #122]
Communism: a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
Karl Marx birthed communism out of his atheistic humanism. This is a fact and not disputed in the least.
Careful examination of Marx's classical loci on religion and atheism shows that his atheistic views are coterminous with a humanism, the range of which had to be worked out through a total critique of society and all its institutions. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20098613?seq=1
Do you have an example of a communist state that is not atheistic in their demanded belief system?
Lenin began and Stalin completed the organizational structures and the repertoire of strategies and tactics that would be used as a model by almost all subsequent communist movements for suppressing religion. This model was primarily constructed to overcome the challenges posed to the revolution by a powerful Russian Orthodox Church. As such it did not fit the religious circumstances of other communist countries. It was poorly adapted to the decentralized patterns of religious practice in Asia, and it was unable to eliminate resistance from the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Europe, especially when that church was connected with nationalism. Even though the Stalinist model initially seemed successful in eliminating political opposition from religion in the Soviet Union, it was in the long run a failure on its own terms. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10 ... 2056-e-034
Democracy: a form of government in which the people have the authority to choose their governing legislation.
Did Washington see a role for religion in the new United States?
Absolutely. Washington believed that democracy could quickly become anarchy unless the American people had a strong moral grounding. In his 1796 Farewell Address to the country, in which he announced that he would retire from the presidency at the end of his second term, Washington reminded his countrymen that not even a good education could make up for a lack of religion in people’s lives: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” https://www.mountvernon.org/george-wash ... 0grounding.
From that ultra-conservative news outlet CNN
Three surprising ways the Protestant Reformation shaped our world
1. Free inquiry
2. Democracy
3. Limited government
cnn.com/2017/10/29/world/reformation-world-change/index.html
Next time can you please add sources to your asertions.

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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #125

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to brunumb in post #123]
Oh dear Zeus! I hope that this patently unscientific and absurd view of fixing the world's food problems is only an eccentric view of a tiny minority. If not, we are most certainly doomed. My head is still spinning after read that.
Study Finds Plant Growth Surges as CO2 Levels Rise https://www.climatecentral.org/news/stu ... rise-16094

Current evidence suggests that that the concentrations of atmospheric CO2 predicted for the year 2100 will have major implications for plant physiology and growth. Under elevated CO2 most plant species show higher rates of photosynthesis, increased growth, decreased water use and lowered tissue concentrations of nitrogen and protein. Rising CO2 over the next century is likely to affect both agricultural production and food quality. The effects of elevated CO2 are not uniform; some species, particularly those that utilize the C4 variant of photosynthesis, show less of a response to elevated CO2 than do other types of plants. Rising CO2 is therefore likely to have complex effects on the growth and composition of natural plant communities. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowled ... -13254108/

Yes, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helps plants grow, but it’s no excuse to downplay climate change https://theconversation.com/yes-more-ca ... nge-130603

Studies have shown that higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect crops in two important ways: they boost crop yields by increasing the rate of photosynthesis, which spurs growth, and they reduce the amount of water crops lose through transpiration. ... During that process they release water vapor. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... hurt-crops

Do I really need to go on.

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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #126

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #124]
Karl Marx birthed communism out of his atheistic humanism. This is a fact and not disputed in the least.
This is not a fact ... it is utterly wrong. The so-called "Communist Manifesto", and other writings of Marx, were not driven by any atheist beliefs he may have held. They were driven by the fact that he thought it outrageous that the means of production were not controlled by the workers, and that the workers did not share in profits. The industrial revolution was ramping up heavily when he wrote most of his work and if you read him he also rambles on about how terrible it is that a product once made by a single craftsman had been split up into independent steps each carried out on an assembly line or a machine. He hated mass production, and the whole idea of Capitalism which he was convinced would lead to a revolt by the workers (class warfare) who would take over the factories and institute socialism, which was the last step before "pure" communism where everyone lived in this imagined utopia "from each according to his abilties, to each according to his needs." None of this was driven by any ideas he had about atheist humanism, but his hatred for capitalism. Where on earth did you get the idea that his ideas were driven by atheistic beliefs?
Do I really need to go on.
Everyone knows that plants like CO2, just like animals like O2. But you can't just look at one side of the equation. Higher levels of CO2 and CH4 cause global temperature to rise out of balance with the natural cycle that plants and air-breating animals controlled prior to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by anthropogenic activity coinciding with the start of the industrial revolution. One reason there is a lot of debate on the "global warming" issue is that it is a complicated problem with competing sources and sinks for the gases, and the normal variations in CO2 over time that have been very large. All of these interactionss have not yet been quantified and modeled to such a precise level that there is a complete understanding of what the impact of anthropogenic activity is having, and how it will impact things going forward, quantitatively. Maybe Mother Earth can handle a lot more emissions than some believe, and maybe she can't. But to completely ignore it and say "let's let a god decide it" and leave it at that doesn't make any sense ... at least for someone who doesn't believe any god is going to swoop in and save the day if we humans screw it up.
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #127

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #126]
This is not a fact ... it is utterly wrong. The so-called "Communist Manifesto", and other writings of Marx, were not driven by any atheist beliefs he may have held. They were driven by the fact that he thought it outrageous that the means of production were not controlled by the workers, and that the workers did not share in profits. The industrial revolution was ramping up heavily when he wrote most of his work and if you read him he also rambles on about how terrible it is that a product once made by a single craftsman had been split up into independent steps each carried out on an assembly line or a machine. He hated mass production, and the whole idea of Capitalism which he was convinced would lead to a revolt by the workers (class warfare) who would take over the factories and institute socialism, which was the last step before "pure" communism where everyone lived in this imagined utopia "from each according to his abilties, to each according to his needs." None of this was driven by any ideas he had about atheist humanism, but his hatred for capitalism. Where on earth did you get the idea that his ideas were driven by atheistic beliefs?
Marx was a utopian atheist humanist. He was a deceived and diluted man.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the first thinkers to refer to them as utopian, referring to all socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an ethically just society as utopian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_s ... %20utopian.
People are basically good, and have an innate need to make themselves and the world better: The humanistic approach emphasizes the personal worth of the individual, the centrality of human values, and the creative, active nature of human beings. https://www.simplypsychology.org/humani ... n%20beings.
And it is very well documented that he was an atheist.
Communism a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. Oxford definition
Carl Marx believed that the government should control property and business because men are basically good and will do the best for their fellow man.

This is actually in direct opposition to the Bible which states that every man is born with a sinful heart and will continue to sin unless he accepts Jesus as his savior and Lord. In theology, this is called the doctrine of total depravity. Man's heart is depraved unless God acts on it. What you believe about the state of man when he is born depends on what you believe about origins.

On the other hand, the writers of the Constitution of the United States believed that men were depraved and separated the government into three co-equal branches so as to combat mans sinful lust for power. Communism has no such safeguard.
Everyone knows that plants like CO2, just like animals like O2. But you can't just look at one side of the equation. Higher levels of CO2 and CH4 cause global temperature to rise out of balance with the natural cycle that plants and air-breating animals controlled prior to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by anthropogenic activity coinciding with the start of the industrial revolution.
That global warming is an anthropogenic activity is an assumption that everyone seems to be making. At the start of the industrial revolution, the CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. Plants cannot survive if the CO2 levels drop below 150 ppm. So why should we believe that 280 ppm is the optimal CO2 level for the Earth. Rock samples show that there were times in the past that the CO2 levels were above 1000 ppm up to 2000 ppm. The optimal level for plant growth is between 800 to 1200 ppm. More biomass would mean more oxygen. A more uniform temperature on the earth would mean fewer storms. If CO2 is actually causing the temperature increase.
By analyzing the amount of titanium 44, a radioactive isotope, the team found a significant increase in the Sun's radioactive output during the 20th century. https://www.space.com/2942-sun-activity ... firms.html
But it is really hard finding a downside to this rise in CO2. If the plant is warmer places like Canada and Russia would also be able to grow more food to feed the planet.

And this is all based on an assumption that 280 ppm is the optimal CO2 concentration.

One reason there is a lot of debate on the "global warming" issue is that it is a complicated problem with competing sources and sinks for the gases, and the normal variations in CO2 over time that have been very large. All of these interactionss have not yet been quantified and modeled to such a precise level that there is a complete understanding of what the impact of anthropogenic activity is having, and how it will impact things going forward, quantitatively. Maybe Mother Earth can handle a lot more emissions than some believe, and maybe she can't. But to completely ignore it and say "let's let a god decide it" and leave it at that doesn't make any sense ... at least for someone who doesn't believe any god is going to swoop in and save the day if we humans screw it up.
This whole global warming idea is a scam. In 300 years at the very latest, there will be no more fossil fuels to burn. So long before that 300-year mark, man will have had to have converted over to alternative fuels anyway. In 150 years or fewer fossil fuels will become too expensive to use. So long before we reach even 1200 ppm fossil fuels will be gone. :( Hopefully, we would have warm the Earth up enough and put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to feed the 30 billion people that will live on the planet at that time.

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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #128

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #127]
Marx was a utopian atheist humanist. He was a deceived and diluted man.
And it is very well documented that he was an atheist.
I'm not disputing that he was an atheist ... my point was that his atheism is not what drove his socialist/communist ideas, as you had stated. It was his politics and particularly his negative views of capitalism.
What you believe about the state of man when he is born depends on what you believe about origins.
Not for me. I believe the state of a baby when born is that it has no religious beliefs or any acquired knowledge, and is taught these things as it lives among other humans and interacts with them. The mechanism for the origin of the universe, or the origin of life on this planet, has nothing to do with that condition.
Communism has no such safeguard.
I'm not defending communism ... I think it is a terrible system. But you stated that Marx derived his ideas from his atheism, and I've never read anything to support that claim. He could hate capitalism independent of any beliefs about gods.
If CO2 is actually causing the temperature increase.
There is a great deal of observational evidence that anthropogenic CO2 and CH4 emissions are causing global temperature rises. That isn't in doubt. The question is exactly what quantitative effects these will cause over long periods of time, given that there are many other processes involved in global circulation, ocean uptake of CO2, etc. It is a far more complicated problem than the ozone hole, for example, and it probably isn't wise to just ignore it and assume some god will take of things at some point in the future.
And this is all based on an assumption that 280 ppm is the optimal CO2 concentration.
Who makes that assumption? No one I know of. The reason the alarm flag went up on this issue is that human activity is increasing the amounts of CO2 and CH4 significantly, global temperautures appear to be rising as a result (is there a better explanation for the near perfect correlation between the rise in CO2 levels and industrial activity by humans ... particularly fossil fuel consumption for vehicles, plastic manufacturing, etc.), and this raises the question as to whether or not it is something serious to worry about and address, only a minor problem, or no problem at all. There are implications for rising atmospheric temperatures, and we need to continue to study the issue so that we aren't caught with our pants down with no time to do anything about it. The atmospheric models are not yet sufficiently quantitatively accurate to answer every question about the subject and to have confidence that future predictions are accurate.
This whole global warming idea is a scam. In 300 years at the very latest, there will be no more fossil fuels to burn. So long before that 300-year mark, man will have had to have converted over to alternative fuels anyway. In 150 years or fewer fossil fuels will become too expensive to use. So long before we reach even 1200 ppm fossil fuels will be gone. :( Hopefully, we would have warm the Earth up enough and put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to feed the 30 billion people that will live on the planet at that time.
Good thing you aren't running global atmospheric science efforts! Most of this is pure speculation on your part, and it is a fact that anthropogenic CO2 and CH4 emissions are contributing to rising atmospheric temperatures. The quantitative implications of this temperature rise over time is being studied because it is, in fact, something to potentially worry about. Fortunately, the science community doesn't have the attitude that any problems that humans may create are no big deal because some god will take care of it. 30 billion people on this planet is not a good idea!
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #129

Post by brunumb »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:46 pm This is actually in direct opposition to the Bible which states that every man is born with a sinful heart and will continue to sin unless he accepts Jesus as his savior and Lord. In theology, this is called the doctrine of total depravity. Man's heart is depraved unless God acts on it. What you believe about the state of man when he is born depends on what you believe about origins.
I don't care what the Bible states. I find it a truly abhorrent view of humanity. When you can demonstrate that any of it is true then that is the time to consider taking it seriously. Even then, demeaning human beings does not really warrant any consideration at all. To think that it is then up to God's will to act on the human heart (mind actually) to remove this depravity does not reflect well on this allegedly all-loving deity. What an appalling doctrine.
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Re: Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

Post #130

Post by nobspeople »

brunumb wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 6:00 pm
EarthScienceguy wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:46 pm This is actually in direct opposition to the Bible which states that every man is born with a sinful heart and will continue to sin unless he accepts Jesus as his savior and Lord. In theology, this is called the doctrine of total depravity. Man's heart is depraved unless God acts on it. What you believe about the state of man when he is born depends on what you believe about origins.
I don't care what the Bible states. I find it a truly abhorrent view of humanity. When you can demonstrate that any of it is true then that is the time to consider taking it seriously. Even then, demeaning human beings does not really warrant any consideration at all. To think that it is then up to God's will to act on the human heart (mind actually) to remove this depravity does not reflect well on this allegedly all-loving deity. What an appalling doctrine.
Ironically:
AMEN to that!
It always surprises me at the way people tend to accept the lowliness of themselves. Sure people are capable of terrible things (I see it almost everyday) but they're also capable of great things. There's so much greatness within humanity to be tapped if we just would. But we tend to allow religions squash that ideal in an effort to control and obtain our money, giving them power and ultimately, undue influence.

Prostitution is not the oldest profession, religion is. And until we wake up and realize this, we're doomed to continue to travel down the darkest path, begging invisible beings for help while raining our cash, our lives, our time and our energy on a never obtainable payoff.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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