Were Adam and Eve the First Humans?

[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.

[Tcg]

[Replying to Diagoras in post #79]

You did not say anything contradicting my argument. That all humans are decent from one female eve.

All men are also descendants of one man.

All men living now, then, would have a Y chromosome descended from that one man — identified as Y-chromosome Adam. https://www.nature.com/news/genetic-ada ... me-1.13478

Those are the observations. Now men may like to say that there were other 'humans' around at the time but that would not be an observation that would be a hypothesis at best and in actuality more like hopeful thinking.

A casual read of the source you are using to support your view reveals this:

(The biblical reference is a bit of a misnomer because this Adam was by no means the only man alive at his time.)

https://www.nature.com/news/genetic-ada ... me-1.13478

The very source you are using to support your view contradicts it.


Tcg

[IAMinyou]

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.

It doesn't matter what their names were but there had to be a beginning to this temporary generation we're involved in. How else do you start a simulation with the first two avatars who are created as one MAN? One avatar is male and the other avatar is female. Adam ( MALE ) and Eve ( FEMALE ) were the only two bodies that appeared to walk on Earth as a created MAN made of information within the IMAGE and VOICE of our CREATOR in the beginning. However, all their offspring only had one AVATAR ( human body ).

The good news is that after the day of the Lord, MAN ( male and female ) will wake up on the New Earth with two AVATARS. One will be a MALE and the other will be a FEMALE. Never again will a human being be called an adulterer where only eunuchs birthed from a womb will honor the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery".

[jimtatertayte]

Adam and Eve were the first humans created in the image of God.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to IAMinyou in post #82]

It doesn't matter what their names were but there had to be a beginning to this temporary generation we're involved in. How else do you start a simulation with the first two avatars who are created as one MAN? One avatar is male and the other avatar is female.

I don't know what you are referring to with all the avatar and simulation comments (maybe a reference to some video game?), but we know how humans got here. We evolved from a great ape ancestor through a series of intermediates for which we have a great deal of fossil evidence. The genetics work of the last 40 years just confirms what the fossil record strongly suggested. Humans did not just appear, fully formed, as we exist today, and we know this for a fact now. It is not conjecture. How else can you explain all of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... on_fossils

And nearly complete skeletons like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkana_Boy

which is almost 2 million years old. Compare the brain size of Homo erectus and Homo sapien:

https://humanorigins.si.edu/human-chara ... ics/brains

These are clearly different species and modern humans, like all modern plants and animals, evolved from earlier forms. Modern humans did not simply appear in present form at an instant in time as described by various religious creation stories. We know better than that now, and can discard such stories as religious myth.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Tcg in post #81]

The very source you are using to support your view contradicts it.

Are you aware of the difference between observation and hypothesis?

The observation made in both of these articles is that all humans are descendent from one female. Now the author may make the hypothesis that there were other humans around but there are NO OBSERVATIONS to support the author's claim that there were other humans around.

[DavidLeon]

[Replying to IAMinyou in post #82]

It doesn't matter what their names were but there had to be a beginning to this temporary generation we're involved in. How else do you start a simulation with the first two avatars who are created as one MAN? One avatar is male and the other avatar is female.

I don't know what you are referring to with all the avatar and simulation comments (maybe a reference to some video game?), but we know how humans got here.

I wondered that myself. So I looked it up. From Webster's: "Avatar derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "descent," and when it first appeared in English in the late 18th century, it referred to the descent of a deity to the earth—typically, the incarnation in earthly form of Vishnu or another Hindu deity. It later came to refer to any incarnation in human form, and then to any embodiment (such as that of a concept or philosophy), whether or not in the form of a person. In the age of technology, avatar has developed another sense—it can now be used for the image that a person chooses as his or her "embodiment" in an electronic medium."

We evolved from a great ape ancestor through a series of intermediates for which we have a great deal of fossil evidence. The genetics work of the last 40 years just confirms what the fossil record strongly suggested. Humans did not just appear, fully formed, as we exist today, and we know this for a fact now. It is not conjecture.

What, specifically, was our foremost ancestor evolutionarily speaking? The originator. The, uh ... prokaryotes?

How else can you explain all of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... on_fossils

And nearly complete skeletons like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkana_Boy

which is almost 2 million years old. Compare the brain size of Homo erectus and Homo sapien:

https://humanorigins.si.edu/human-chara ... ics/brains

I wouldn't. How would you explain all of this:







https://www.ff911truth.org/

https://www.ae911truth.org/

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/

You don't care about those? Well, maybe you should give them a chance and spend the hours it would take to comb through them in order to properly address the subject of what nonsense people will believe.

These are clearly different species and modern humans, like all modern plants and animals, evolved from earlier forms. Modern humans did not simply appear in present form at an instant in time as described by various religious creation stories. We know better than that now, and can discard such stories as religious myth.

You know this for sure? Absolutely certain? It sounds silly to me. It sounds like we could discard it as religious myth. So how do you show it. I mean you yourself, how would you express it in simple terms without linking to anything.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #84]

We evolved from a great ape ancestor through a series of intermediates for which we have a great deal of fossil

To put it in the words of the magazine "Nature"

"Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation."
Hughes, J.F. et al. 2010. Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure gene content. Nature. 463 (7280): 536-539.

Even using the religion of evolution the numbers just don't add up to any hope that humans evolved from apes. Unless now you believe that apes evolved 310 million years. The more we look, the worst evolutionism looks. There is always pantheism to turn to if you do not like the idea of a creator God.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #87]

Even using the religion of evolution the numbers just don't add up to any hope that humans evolved from apes.

You're cherry picking. Support for evolution does not just come from genetics, or implications from subtopics like inferred mutation rates. In court it would be called a preponderance of the evidence, and there is so much evidence for not just human evolution, but evolution in general, that it has become the theory that it is and accepted by the majority of scientists and lay people who don't have their objective analysis capabilities clouded by religious beliefs.

There are many members of the genus Homo, and we have an extensive fossil record that can be dated (eg. see the Wikipedia link I posted in post 84). We can see how brain size and other aspects changed over time from very chip-like animals like Homo habilis with small brains (but larger than chimps), to modern Homo sapiens. We can analyze artifacts left by these various members of genus Homo (tools, ornaments, grave goods and markers, dwelling structures, etc.) and get information on their capabilities, and see how that changed over time as a measure of general intelligence. The preponderance of this evidence, combined with genetics work, shows that modern humans did indeed evolve from a great ape ancestor. Cherry picking and/or misinterpreting some aspect of molecular clocks doesn't negate the mountains of corroborating evidence in support of evolution.

You object to it purely because it contradicts a religious creation myth, not because there is any scientific justification for discarding evolution. If there were, it would have been put onto the trash heap of failed science long ago ... but it hasn't.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to DavidLeon in post #86]

What, specifically, was our foremost ancestor evolutionarily speaking? The originator. The, uh ... prokaryotes?

I'd recommend The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. This topic has been written about extensively and is far better answered by an evolutionary biologist like Dawkins than someone like me. But I do believe all life evolved from some population of single-celled organisms. The commonality of the genetic code and base pairs is just too convincing.

You don't care about those? Well, maybe you should give them a chance and spend the hours it would take to comb through them in order to properly address the subject of what nonsense people will believe.

I have no doubt about people believing crazy stuff. How long have people been searching for a monster in Loch Ness, or Bigfoot, or believed that they were abducted by aliens, or can speak with the dead, etc. But there has never been a monster found in Loch Ness, or a Bigfoot, or any evidence at all to justify that someone saw an "alien" much less that they were abducted by one. That is the difference between the list of human fossils I linked to, and some crazy topic humans may believe. The fossils are physical objects that can be dated, and they tell a reasonable and feasible story about the process of human evolution. Nothing has to be imagined or "believed" on faith.

You know this for sure? Absolutely certain? It sounds silly to me. It sounds like we could discard it as religious myth. So how do you show it. I mean you yourself, how would you express it in simple terms without linking to anything.

You could discard the fossil record and its interpretation (regarding human evolution) as religious myth? What is your definition of "myth"? The fossils in the Wikipedia article are real, and they can be dated. That alone completely removes them from any similarity to religious myth. Then the question is how to interpret them, and the most obvious and sensible interpretation is that they represent a progression of human ancestors that gradually evolved from more chimpamzee like apes to the apes that Homo sapiens are today (we are taxonomically classified as apes of course). What other interpretation can there be? What could you offer up as an alternative explanation of the fossil record shown in the Wikipedia article I linked in post 84?

You asked me to "express it" (presumably the comment that we know modern humans evolved from a great ape ancestor) without any links. Since I've never found a human ancestor fossil myself I can't take a photo of my fossil collection and post that, so the only way to reference this fossil record is to link to an external source, or reference a book. But the fossil record is convincing to me, and again I don't see what alternative explanation of it makes sense other than that these represent earlier creatures in the evolutionary path between a common ancestor that we share with chimpanzees and bonobos, and modern humans.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #85]

Now the author may make the hypothesis that there were other humans around but there are NO OBSERVATIONS to support the author's claim that there were other humans around.

Then how do you explain the fossils shown and dated in the Wikipedia link I posted in post 84. These fossils are evidence, observations, existing physical things that clearly show the existence of creatures different from modern Homo sapiens, but similar enough to support the obvious explanation that they are part of an evolutionary progression that lead to modern humans. Comparative anatomy is a useful tool.