He’s… Pragmatic
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I’ll remember that one. 
“Liam, I can’t believe you lied to me, especially after your sermon yesterday where you called out lying as a sin!”
“You are making much too much of this, my Love. I’m simply being pragmatic!” 
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In my cultic days… years… decades we went to inordinate lengths to justify God. The thing is, any kind of even remote Bilblicism means you have to do moral gymnastics to reconcile Jesus’ God with Jesus.
Back to the pragmatic. Incest was OK for the second generation of humanity as their genetic health was so good they were good for a thousand years. But two and a half thousand years later the genetic decay was bad enough that incest was a serious genetic risk as it is now. It would take another two and a half thousand years for social services to evolve. So kill them. Brutally. Publically. For the greater good.
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Tone, she is a tricky mistress to read at the best of times, let alone on the internet. I hope you didn’t think I was mocking you with my previous reply, that was not my intent. My sincere apologies if that was how it came across.
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Liam, Liam, Liam.
You always have the tone of a bloody nice bloke.
Apology rejected : )
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Eventually gbob will chime in with his explanation that the flood took place 5 million years ago with the flooding of the Mediterranean basin… which is long enough ago to dodge the genetic evidence of there being no genetic bottleneck. This is not to say that there are no difficulties with the scientific evidence and I am certainly not buying it.
Meanwhile my explanation remains the same as well. This was a local flood wiping out the first human civilization, long after the homo sapiens species had spread around the world 100,000-30,000 years ago but before human beings with their memetic heritage from God via Adam and Eve had spread over the earth, which happens after the flood in Genesis 11.
The only genetic bottleneck I see any evidence for is one around 100,000 - 200,000 with a surviving remnant of a few thousand in southern Africa of the most recent ice age which became the modern homo sapiens group which migrated to the rest of the world after that. On the way they apparently absorbed the Neanderthals of Northern Africa and Europe as well as the Denisovans in the east.
No… his theory pushes it back 5.3 million years. And that is the problem I have with it. It renders the all these Biblical events insignificant to the beginning of human civilization. Though if we find evidence of human civilization from millions of years ago, particularly at the bottom of the Mediteranean sea, that would be a different matter.
I also find it difficult to believe that these stories would remain significant enough to be remembered in any way rather than buried by the intervening millions of years which I find it hard to believe did not have significant events. In fact there are events we know happened which should have been remembered as more recent, like the ice age and surviving in southern Africa. It seems far far far more likely that these stories in Genesis if based in historical events are things which happened much more recently 12,000-6,000 years ago.
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Yes after Seth which was after Cain left.
No, and this is clear from the fact that Nephilim exist before and after the flood.
The evidence of DNA says that we all had one common male ancestor!
The evidence of DNA says that we all had one common female ancestor!
The evidence of DNA is mute and blind on all other points!
If we have been degenerating from then till now, then yes, the Bible could be telling the exact truth.
If we have been evolving from then till now then again, the Bible could be telling the truth.
You see, in both cases, enough changes could occur to produce all noted variations.
While the three brothers who all had the same parents all had wives who had different DNA sets too.
Also, it is know that current rates of degeneration and birth defects if followed back do not fit a time line that is very old.
Now this is explained away through pollution and over population.
But the real truth is that it is more theory than fact.
Images I made
On DNA
On Common ancestry
Unless one of Noah’s daughters in laws had one for a wife?
While a very controversial possibility is that Nephilim were cross breeds between angels and human women.
I think it is more likely that Nephilim were cross breeds from Neanderthals and Modern humans.
I think you meant one of Noah’s sons may have had a wife who was a Nephilim, but I think the passage in Genesis describes Nephilim differently.
And yet one of the reasons for the flood was to destroy the Nephilim. Their origin story functions as the prologue to the flood account.
If they were such a supernatural abomination, it seems strange that God allowed one to get on the boat. 
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first I wouldn’t want to interpret much of genesis literally, their is strong evidence that it was largely inspired by Babylonian myths of the time. Now this doesn’t remove value from the text, if anything it shows how God is different from the Babylonian gods.
Now From a science does support a common ancestor. This is known as the mitochondrial eve and the Y-chromosomal Adam. Now their is no evidence that those two individuals ever met especially viewing the time scales between the two it be very unlikely. The mitochondrial eve existed between 150000 to 230000 years ago and the Y-chromosomal Adam 200000 to 300000 yeas ago.
DNA aside, the flood has appeared in many ancient mythologies but their isn’t evidence that their was a planet wide flood. their is debates on what the meaning of the world actually is.
very ancient people has advised against taking genesis in particular literally. the only reason that genesis could be taken literally is the world really is that simple and that is not a point of view supported by many especially historically.
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That’s not necessarily what the text says.
Gen 9:18 — Gen 9:19
Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. (NASB)
“Earth” here is “eretz”, which means “land”. Let’s write that verse supplementing the English translation land:
Gen 9:18 — Gen 9:19
Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole land was populated.
What land is being talked about? The region Noah lives. And as you get into the table of nations, it’s describing the people living in that region. Similar language is used for Joseph’s famine, Darius’s letter in Daniel 6, and other places.
That’s pure speculation and never stated in the text. Cain got married at a time that no daughters have been mentioned. Here’s what the text mentions:
Eve gives birth to Cain (4:1)
Eve gives birth to Abel (4:2)
Cain kills Abel (4:8)
Cain is sent away to wander (4:11-16)
Cain has relations with his wife, who bears Enoch (4:17)
Cain builds a city and names it after Enoch (4:17)
Adam has relations with his wife again, and she bears Seth (“for God has appointed me another offspring in place of Abel”) (4:25)
The other sons and daughters are clearly after Seth, according to 5:4:
Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. (NASB)
So to say Cain married his sister and built a city of his own siblings and cousins means that Adam and Eve had other children prior to Seth. That is quite an assumption being made, when the siblings are only mentioned after Seth and after Cain has married, had a child, and built a city.
I think the Bible is telling us about God’s chosen people, and the other people just aren’t mentioned. That would easily explain Cain’s wife, the city, the fear of being killed, and also how we have people living in the Americas, China, and Egypt continuously through the time of Noah’s flood. I think Noah’s local flood was focused on Adam’s line - God’s chosen people. He started over with Noah, and then from there chose Abraham later. Other people were still on the earth.
Now I’m making an assumption that there are other people around. I will readily admit that the text does not say explicitly that there were other people around. It just hints at it. But neither does it say that Cain married his sister. That’s a conclusion drawn from the presupposition that there were no other people around.
The theological meaning of those chapters is easy to understand at surface level. Recreating a movie of what exactly happened is a whole lot harder, whether you’re young earth or old earth, special creation or evolution. The Bible doesn’t give us all the information we want to know. It gives us all the information we need to know. It’s not a science textbook or an exhaustive history (where did Melchizedek come from? Who knows).
Given your statement about Cain’s wife (“I remember hearing about…”), it sounds like you haven’t really studied the text itself deeply. Perhaps you’ve read someone’s interpretation and just gone along with that. Try sitting down and really studying the text. Question it. Look up what the Hebrew words mean. Do some real research. Then come here with your informed questions. 
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It may or may not be taken as evidence for a global flood, but there is water deposited sediments that average a mile in depth across all the continents. To me that means that where there is sedimentary rock, that piece of land was once covered with water. That does not count out a global flood.
One flood of a few months making a bed of sediment a mile deep?
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Incorrect! It says no such thing. Quite the contrary!
The Y-chromosomal evidence does not mean a single male ancestor. Just because a portion our Y-chromosome comes from a single grandfather doesn’t mean that we only have one grandfather.
Incorrect! It says no such thing. Quite the contrary!
The mitochondrial RNA evidence does not mean a single female ancestor. Just because our mitochondrial RNA comes from only one grandmother doesn’t mean we only have one grandmother.
What the evidence of DNA actually shows that as long as the species existed there was no time when our ancestors numbered fewer than 10,000 individuals.
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The book looks interesting. Does it go into enough detail to address questions such as:
Where did the sediments come from? How did the Colorado Plateau rise? Where did the phenomenal amount of limestone found all over the earth come from? How were 1000’ of sediments covering 10,000 square miles cleared away before the Grand Canyon could be created? How did the Colorado river cut through the Kiabab Plateau? How were the side canyons carved? Where did the earth’s radioactivity come from?
If it attempts to answer most of those relevant questions I would be interested in reading the book.
Where? . . .