Read the part about Cain being afraid of retribution.
Who is he talking about? The Bible has only described 2 other people!
Cain marries. Whom?
Cain builds a city… for Whom?
Perhaps T.Rex and Co. would have quickly eaten cows and bears to extinction - but I’m just guessing (you could ask a theistic evo’ the same question, couldn’t you?). Incidentally, have you ever considered that sheep may not be able to survive without the protection of man?
I don’t know why God’s creation proceeded in the manner that it did. You’ll have to ask Him sometime. It’s a bit like asking, why did God make the sky blue? Personally, I’m a little peeved that I can’t see a T.Rex in the flesh - what an awesome creature!
Firstly, according to the Douay-Rheims Bible commentary, Adam and Eve had been producing offspring for about 130 years when Cain killed Abel - offspring who then in turn produced offspring of their, and so on. So there could have been several thousand other people around at the time of the murder.
Furthermore, Cain was not referring to only that present moment, but also anytime in his future - he lived for 730 years, I believe. So there would have been thousands of potential killers in his lifetime.
A close relative. He was at least 130 years old when he married. There would have been several generations of offspring (ie, thousands of people) in existence by that time.
Obviously, one man cannot build a city alone, so the text is referring to a settlement that Cain began, that grew into a city in his lifetime (ie, perhaps about six hundred years after he killed Abel).
How big was a “city” in those times? Probably a lot smaller that what we would consider a “city” today.
Christy, Edgar, et al…thanks for the ref to this posting. If it were not true that it is only shortly after 5 AM and I have to get my eyeballs open so that I can go drive your kids to school (in my bus), I would stop and read this article or blog you are referring us to, I wanted to refer Edgar and others to a book called God;s Universe which I read a number of years ago …Owen G??? I think wrote it and he is/was prof of astronomy emeritus at Harvard,book was on reading list for a class at a well known evangelical college, It helped me a lot, esp the author’s explanation of the development of the carbon atom…So keave this posting about NH up here !!!
OK gotta go!!
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The resolution being an extension to the theory of evolution.
@Edgar what’s your point? Gould is not talking about progressive creation.
Like his sister? When did the prohibition against incest begin then? Cain knew murder was wrong why did he think incest was ok?
Actually they survive in the wild just fine.
Yes, sort of --I just watched Jurassic Park again to “vet” it before my 10 year old would watch it. Frankly, I’m going to edit a lot! Yike.
Your questions are answered by Christian Evolutionists you meet here at BioLogos… and the answers don’t require the premise that God would make thousands of individual kinds, as Special Creations, in the exact same pattern that Evolutionary evidence indicates.
I see a lot of ellipses. These are what we call “quote mines” which are bits of quotes pulled out of context to make the speaker say something different than they intended.
Any reading of Gould’s work demonstrates that he fully believes there are transitional fossils.
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It’s very frustrating for @Edgar and others because we’re fed this to look like they’re direct, contextualized quotes, but they aren’t. I remember some YEC books I read that did this to me, too.
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Hi Edgar,
I hope you don’t mind a careful examination of your presentation.
(1) Your answers that support your preferred interpretation of early Genesis contain a lot of speculation.
Surely you recognize that the commentary is not to be regarded with the same authority as the Scripture itself. Does the Scripture explicitly state that Adam and Eve had been producing offspring for 130 years at the time of the murder? If so, where?
How do you know that Cain was at least 130 years old when he married? What Scripture passage explicitly states this?
How do you know that Cain founded the city of Enoch a full 600 years after he killed Abel? What Scripture passage explicitly states this?
(2) Some of your speculation is highly implausible.
Have you worked out the math on this? It sounds like you’re just guessing. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the population doubles every 25 years starting with a base of 2 (Adam and Eve). Note that this is wildly optimistic and radically faster than human population growth at any time in recorded history. Under this assumption, there would be 32 people alive 130 years after Cain’s birth. It would take 170 more years until 4000 people are alive.
(3) Conclusion - It is not impossible that all these speculations could be correct. However, any system of interpretation that relies on them is ripe for being overturned by other interpretations that are more compatible with the ancient Hebrew culture and with the data we observe in history and science.
I can provide more detail on alternative interpretations if you are interested, Edgar.
Blessings,
Chris Falter
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@Edgar you said you wanted to avoid quote mining and yet here you are quote mining. This is just a partial quotation and the complete quote can be found at Quote Mine Project: Gould, Eldredge and Punctuated Equilibria Quotes Which is the Quote Mine Project. If I might ask, where did you find this quote?
Here is a quote from there.
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Yes genomic similarity is intriguing. In spite of this, the species are different. Here is something to think about. The symbiotic relationship between species poses new challenges to evolution. All species must have been created all at once at the same time for this to happen. Which came first? The chicken or the egg. The answer is :at the time of creation, they all came into existence at once.
For those who have serious thoughts about fossils supporting evolution, I have a suggestion. If you go to London, please go to Kensington. There you will see the British museum of Natural History.They have exhibited numerous fossils. The curator of this museum stated that he has examined thousands of fossils from all over the world. He has not yet identified the “MISSING LINK” Where is it?
Hi M.S.,
Haven’t seen you around here before. Welcome!
Could you explain what you mean by this? I haven’t heard of this objection before.
Symbiotic relationships among various species have been known since well before the time of Darwin, and it has been described effectively from within an evolutionary paradigm. How is this a new challenge?
Best,
AMW
What missing link?
Edgar is actually right about this one thing. The domestic sheep would not fare well in the wild. Unlike their wild forebears, their wool grows continuously and would cause problems if not shorn. More seriously, the ewes often abandon their lambs. So at lambing time stockmen bring the ewes into sheds where they can make sure the ewes bond with the lambs and nurse them.
The domestic horse, on the other hand (or hoof), can thrive in feral bands with no problem.
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What about parasites? Was Adam created with head lice, pubic lice, hookworms, guinea worms, tape worms, etc?
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Welcome Madd to the discussion. We might not be referring to the same thing here. While percent genomic similarity is interesting, it’s not the most compelling data point for common ancestry. For starters, I would suggest checking out the 99.9% shared ERVs (endogenous retrograde viruses) and abundance of extremely specific mutations that we share with chimps. I have never seen any plausible explanation for these data other than common ancestry.
I’m not clear on what you’re saying here. Are you suggesting that symbiosis between species cannot be accounted for by evolutionary processes?
As a biology major in college, we learned that symbiotic relationships likely started as “facultative behaviors,” meaning not essential for survival. For example, cleaner shrimp that remove parasites from fish were still able to survive (meet their nutritional requirements) without the fish parasites and the fish could still survive with the parasite burden, but there is a selective advantage that favors the organisms that engage in mutualism.
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Edgar asked about sheep. The original sheep kind wouldn’t have any problem living in the wild. Domesticated sheep that have been genetically altered by human breeding efforts might. Although there are known cases where sheep went feral. They are at least surviving to some degree in the wild.