One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife is that they tend to look at today’s world and the problems that would be associated with close relations marrying, and they do not look at the clear historical record God has given to us.
They try to interpret Genesis from our present situation rather than understand the true biblical history of the world and the changes that have occurred because of sin. Because they are not building their worldview on Scripture but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible, they are blinded to the simple answers.
Genesis is the record of the God who was there as history happened. It is the Word of One who knows everything and who is a reliable Witness from the past. Thus, when we use Genesis as a basis for understanding history, we can make sense of evidence which would otherwise be a real mystery. You see, if evolution is true, science has an even bigger problem than Cain’s wife to explain—namely, how could man ever evolve by mutations (mistakes) in the first place, since that process would have made everyone’s children deformed? The mere fact that people can produce offspring that are not largely deformed is a testimony to creation, not evolution.
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Building a worldview based on the intellectual acrobatics you have to go through to maintain a literal view of Genesis =/= a worldview built on scripture.
Adding bits to scripture is just as wrong for you as it is for anyone else, dickhead.
I'd go as far as saying that eating and breathing through the same hole is one heck of a deformation. Not to mention that crappy ass backbone that has to support our weight or that lousy piece of gut that just hangs there between your small and large intestine, waiting to explode and kill you. Creation my arse.
Ken Ham, thats a very nice word salad. Thank you.
Ken, now would YOU please answer me the question who was Cain's wife?
So, Ken, who was Cain's wife?
Or is Ken saying that Cain a) bore children by himself, or b) boinked his mother ... after his exile? Even if evolution were wrong, Ken still hasn't answered the question.
As some hippie freak said, "First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Who are you to say what is and what isn't a deformity? A deformity is simply a deviation from what we understand to be a 'normal' human appearence.
If somebody from the 11th century were to come to the present they'd wonder what happened to fill the world with so many gigantic 6ft tall freaks. We don't consider this height to be abnormal because it is common anongst humans these days, but back then it was fairly unusual.
All offspring are 'deformed' in some way as they are not identical to a single human archetype. However, only those that are radically different are classed as 'deformed'
Ken Ham provided here a very fine example of the "Red Herring" logical fallacy.
"A red herring is a deliberate attempt to divert a process of enquiry by changing the subject."
Of course Ken Ham cannot answer the question who Cain's wife was. As for any frauds, he diverts immediately from this uncomfortable question by babbling the usual nonsense, like "true biblical history", that "one must build his worldview on scripture", and similiar meaningless bullshit.
Ken Ham is no better than a quack, who, when you complain that the "medicine" he sold you is useless, immediately answers that "established academic medicine has a lot of problems and kills thousands of people each year!"
Humans are quite deformed, actually. We have a gargantuan brain case, we walk upright (putting enormous strain on our spinal column and internal organs), flat faces, protruding noses, and we have very little hair. Then again, creationists deliberately misrepresenting what words mean is no news.
how could man ever evolve by mutations (mistakes) in the first place, since that process would have made everyone’s children deformed?
What is a "mistake"? No two of us have the same genes. So are mine right and yours the mistake? Or maybe it's the other way around.
-Cain's wife was a stranger he met when he went to the land of Nod.
Ergo; there were other people
-He was marked by Gawd (or Yawah, or Jehova)to prevent strangers from killing him.
Ergo; there were other people.
Kinda knocks your whole "Adam and Eve were the first and only people" nonsense on it's arse.
Science has long explained why deformity is a rare event. YOU Ken are the one who needs to do the explaining.
Because they are not building their worldview on Scripture but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible, they are blinded to the simple answers.
When a six year old breaks a lamp, he tries to get his mom to interpret the broken lamp from the "worldview" that lamps sometimes break themselves or there was an earthquake or maybe aliens shot it with their death ray. But Mom persists in her secular way of thinking that the football lying among the shards must have had something to do with it.
It's not Mom who is blind to the simple answers, Ken. Neither are most of us. It's the one who invents off-the-wall excuses out of thin air to avoid admitting he's full of it.
@Ken Ham
It is the Word of One who knows everything and who is a reliable Witness from the past.
Indeed. Such a reliable witness he has to tell two different creation stories back-to-back!
"One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife is that they tend to look at today’s world and the problems that would be associated with close relations marrying, and they do not look at the clear historical record God has given to us.
They try to interpret Genesis from our present situation rather than understand the true biblical history of the world and the changes that have occurred because of sin. Because they are not building their worldview on Scripture but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible, they are blinded to the simple answers. "
Is that why you fundies wives are also your sisters?
Ok retard, follow along here
Person inbreeds, their kids appear fine, their kids inbreed and their kids appear fine, over and over again till eventually you start getting more and more and more screwed up offspring till they're complete vegetables.
Do you see at all how this conflicts with your "Everyone came from two people" bullshit yet?
So, in other words, you can't explain where Cain's wife came from either, can you? But instead of an honest "I don't know," you serve up a helping of bullshit along with an attack on evolution.
"Genesis is the record of the God who was there as history happened. It is the Word of One who knows everything and who is a reliable Witness from the past."
Then considering how both accounts of Creation in Genesis contradict each other, then God himself would be a piss-poor witness in a court of law today. Even if he'd been one for the defence in Kitzmiller vs. Dover. PROTIP: Four legs. Y'know, those things that insects don't have.
Along with the hundreds of millions of Iron Chariots we have on Earth today, I guess that's another reason why God daren't show his face round here. [/"The Man Who Sued God"]
So, your answer to the Cain's wife question is that God said it was OK to to f*uck one's sister? I don't remember reading anything like that in Genesis.
P.S. "the true biblical history?" Even if one believes in the Genesis versions of creation, you folks have told us for years that the Bible is the only record of history from that time. As for history concerning other parts of the Bible, it would stun you speechless, Kenny. I can hardly wait.
Why can't Ken Ham understand that the mutations that contribute to evolution are tiny genetic mutations, not spontaneously forming extra limbs/eyes/etc? It's been explained to him thousands of times. Most mutations are neutral, some are beneficial, some are detrimental. The detrimental mutations are weeded out BY EVOLUTION.
Deformity is a word with connotations. We, as humans, are the result of "deformities". We don't look "deformed" to us, because "deformed" to us is relative to our current state as homo sapiens. To us, a deformity means a kid with three arms or one leg. But actually, to our distant (or not so distant) ancestors, such as Eomaia scansoria, the ancient tree shrew, or even Homo habilis, we'd look fairly fucking deformed.
One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife is that they tend to look at today’s world and the problems that would be associated with close relations marrying, and they do not look at the clear historical record God has given to us.
Sorry, I can't stop laughing beyond this point.
Let put this clear. If Genesis is a reliable account of history, either it's or not. Don't try to tell us that sin has corrupted whatever because, as far as I'm concerned, both Adam and Eve, AND Cain, had already sinned. And question number too, who are the people who would try to kill him, if Adam and Eve where the ONLY human beings on Earth?. Keep trying.
You just admitted your ideas are logically invalid. By forming a view first and then looking for evidence that fits your view you are clearly not being rational. This is what leads you to silly conclusions like evolution is wrong, the earth is 6000 years old, god is real, ect.
People who understand that Genesis is a complete fabrication don't have a problem with Cain's wife. They understand it's a fairy tale written by unsophisticated Middle Eastern goat herders a long time ago and doesn't have to make any more sense than the Greek story of Pandora's box.
It's only morons like you, Ken, that have to go through this needless mental gymnastic to deny reality, that have a problem.
..."the clear historical record God has given us".
Yes, we were given a clear record, in the forms of a geological record and a fossil record, along with superior intellingence, as a species, to figure it all out. One would think that if you believe in a Creator, you'd use that intelligence and accept the physical record rather than a collection of conjecture and morality tales written centuries ago by men, and then selected, edited, and re-edited in the fourth century by a group of Catholic bishops.
My understanding of the theory of evolution was that those with the more successful traits were more likely to survive, not that we came from a series of freak accidents.
The fundies can't even keep the simplified version of the theory in their heads, "survival of the fittest". They prefer to paraphrase it as "generation after generation of freaks getting it on".
My nation is sad.
how could man ever evolve by mutations (mistakes) in the first place, since that process would have made everyone’s children deformed?
Gene duplication is one of the ways. And it's the easiest to understand. When a gene is duplicated that means that any new mutations do not affect already existing information which means it is more free to mutate. Still not convinced?:
Okamura K, Feuk L, Marquès-Bonet T, Navarro A, Scherer SW (December 2006). "Frequent appearance of novel protein-coding sequences by frameshift translation". Genomics 88 (6): 6907
470 beneficial genes that have developed through gene duplication and frameshift alone.
Every human has several mutations, most are insignificant or beneficial, some are not so beneficial, but, as we all passed the initial screening process in the womb, very few are fatal.
It's not just random mutations, stupid, you forgot the second part; natural selection. Nature selects the beneficial, the insignificant and the non-lethal are sometimes kept for now. Individuals with beneficial mutations have a bigger chance of surviving long enough to reproduce.
The fact that we DO reproduce, and are not dust-figures with God-breath blown on us, is a testimony to evolution, not creation.
Evolution IS true, dumbass, it has been observed in laboratories countless times. It's kind of like saying "if cars are real...".
What does today's world as opposed to post-Eden world has to do with answering where the heck Cain's wife came from?
There were dust-Adam and rib-Eve and their two sons. That is all.
Don't say "but daughters were not interesting enough to mention in the Bible".
If you do, you can't use "It is the Word of One who knows everything and who is a reliable Witness from the past. Thus, when we use Genesis as a basis for understanding history, we can make sense of evidence which would otherwise be a real mystery."
The mystery here is; how come half of humankind is completely uninteresting? A reliable Witness would see both men and women; without men there are no women, and without women there are no men. We NEED each other in equal measures.
"Because they are not building their worldview on Scripture but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible, they are blinded to the simple answers."
And that is why many people don't believe The Bible. The secular view allows them to see flaws in the Bible or question its inerrancy.
By "building a worldview on scripture", you not only fail to see flaws, you refuse to see them. You answer opposition with "this book is not to be questioned. Never. Ever. Ever!"
And lo! on the 2,191,500th day, God bade James at the US Mint to invent the Nickel. And when James did this thing and saw that it was good, he cried, "Oh Lord, I hath done did this thing that Thou badest me. Why therefore have I done this?"
And the Lord replied, saying: Verily, I work on a need-to-know basis, but since I like you .... One day there will be born to this land a man named Ken Ham. In that time also there will be the visage of Thomas Jefferson on the Nickel, for I have decreed it. Young Ken will shove so many Nickels up his nose that he will be known throughout the land as The Human Piggy Bank. Alas, this will do great harm to his brain, but forever afterward he will glorify My Name. Never once will he see the great irony of the cause being the Jefferson Nickel, but that's how I roll. Just ask Job or Noah.
Thus is it written.
Bag is not a toy.
"One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question..."
Wait, does that mean there are some who can ? ;]
Answer the question Ham? If Adam and Eve were the first people, and they only had two sons, where did the rest of the human race come from? Where did Lilith and the town of Nod come from? Evolution can explain how mutations lead to evolution, it's called natural selection. Meaning, it only favors mutations that ensure and individual's genes get passed on more then everyone else's genes. What evolution can't explain is people magically appearing out of nowhere, and apparently, neither can you.
@Swede : It's true that both sexes need each other, but remember that the people who wrote the Torah (and thus Genesis) were MASSIVE chauvinists. It's possible they genuinely believed that women were uninteresting. You know, like the Greeks.
Do you know what really drives me crazy? Fundies still point me to AiG as this great site that will PROVE to me that evolution is wrong.
Ken, you have it backwards, the fact that sometimes the tragedy of deformed children occurs is solid evidence against creation and, unfortunately, a strong argument for evolution.
Like the man said, the universe works exactly as if randomness was a fact of life and there was no all powerful, loving creator with a devine plan.
@Anon2 & Osiris
Cain's wife was his sister.
The way the apologetic goes is while the bible only mentions three sons Adam and Eve had many other children including daughters. Incest isn't outlawed until the law of Moses. Prior to that God's "perfect" creation hadn't "degraded" sufficiently to be at the point where generic inbreeding was a problem.
By the time of Moses however it had become an issue which is why God outlawed it then.
See how easy it it?
P.S. Her name was supposedly Luluwa. You can find out more "great" stuff here http://sacred-texts.com/bib/fbe/fbe005.htm
He didn't even answer who Cain's wife could have been! Even if we accept his entirely-dubious claim that inbreeding was not harmful back then, that doesn't prevent the undeniable fact that two people cannot-- they simply CANNOT, this is a proven fact-- give rise to a lasting population, let alone one of billions of people. There is simply NOT. ENOUGH. GENETIC. DIVERSITY. for that. (Especially since, according to the story of Noah's Flood, the population of Earth was bottlenecked TWICE.) No matter how "perfect" the original genetic code of Adam and Eve is claimed to be by fundies, it would NEVER be able to produce enough genetic diversity to support a population of billions, or even merely thousands. I think that this is the single greatest disproof of Young Earth Creationism.
@Alencon
So literally the only reason why brother-sister incest is morally wrong, according to your view, is because it's genetically harmful? Not psychologically damaging or harmful to people's relationships with each other? Or did it just become that way when our genes degraded?
Where did Cain's wife come from?
A. God works in mysterious ways.
B. Who are we to question Him?
C. It just takes faith.
D. It will be revealed when we get to Heaven.
E. All of the above.
The correct fundy answer is E. Never, ever "I don't know."
I'm glad I don't have to bother with coming up with a Ham-fested "sciency" non-answer. I'm too lazy, and much too honest, for that. Thank God I'm an atheist!
Back in the days when I had to go to Sunday School, I asked who all those people were who shunned Cain. The teacher told me that the bible was indeed a historical document, but there were many things that were just "left out". Therefore yes, Adam and Eve actually were the first two people on earth, but not everybody who came after were their descendants.
Hairy argument? Sure. But somehow it's one of the few I don't have that much of a problem with.
@gravematter
"Why can't Ken Ham understand that the mutations that contribute to evolution are tiny genetic mutations, not spontaneously forming extra limbs/eyes/etc? It's been explained to him thousands of times. Most mutations are neutral, some are beneficial, some are detrimental. The detrimental mutations are weeded out BY EVOLUTION."
@aaa
"Dude, i don't think you have any understanding of what mutation is."
There's a good reason why those fundies in the Bible Belt don't believe in Evolution:
image
It hasn't happened there yet. >:D
"One of the reasons many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain’s wife"
...is because Abel was Cain's wife and brother (just as the above shows a man with his brother - who is also his father). Ergo, incest, inbreeding & mutations in the Deep South today. QED.
(*sings *)
'I'm my own grandpa...!' X3
'Yew shore do have a purty mouth, boy.' 'Squeal like a pig!' [/"Deliverance"]
...is that 'Duelling Banjos' I hear in the background...?! (*puts on titanium underpants *) XP X3
If you read the linked article, Ham does answer the question - Cain's wife was his sister (or possibly a niece). If you are going from a strictly literal view of Genesis, that is the only response possible, and he doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
While I agree that this quote is stupid, I'm not sure I agree that it's fundie.
"Thus, when we use Genesis as a basis for understanding history"
Ah yes...
image
BTW, evolution and biblical creationism are not mutually exclusive.
Ken Ham is rather proud of the fact that he and his groupies can answer the "Where did Cain get his wife?" question. They seem to think that it proves that people who disagree with them are idiots who don't know their Bible and ask stupid gotcha questions with no intention of learning . . . or something. At any rate, they are so proud of the fact that they've come up with an answer to this question.
They seem much more proud of the fact that they have an answer at all than what that answer actually is.
If I recall correctly, Ken Ham's ingenious solution to the problem of Cain's wife is that Adam and Eve had daughters as well -- it's just that the Bible only mentioned their sons. So Cain married his sister.
But that's okay, because God hadn't declared incest a sin yet. So it wasn't really incest for Cain to marry his sister at all! Incest is bad now, but it was okay back then.
And then these people claim that non-fundies are to blame for the likes of eeevil moral relativism.
We ARE deformed compared to our ancestors, you moron.
And you didn't answer the question about Cain's wife.
You sate that 'They try to interpret Genesis from our present situation rather than understand the true biblical history of the world and the changes that have occurred because of sin' forgetting of course that the bible as such was written by MAN 300 or so years AFTER the birth of a guy called Jesus.
Also how do you explain the 7000 years of recorded history in CHINA? (they have tax records that old).It would appear to any logical,reasonig being that what you peddal is pure snake oil and not worthy of clear thought.. Have you one shred of solid evidence that can be subject to test to prove your theory? Evolution can be tested can be proved creationism cannot, not today, not tomorrow not ever. In fact you are just a man who is scared of dying a fraidy cat who wants a big daddy in the sky to say "dont be afraid I will take full responsibility for All your wrongs & then you can live with me forever in never never land". We athiest are the real deal we know that when we die, we die. That is it there is no god no heaven and we are the braver of the species evolution will eventually kill off religion in ALL its forms and I say that will be no bad thing.
Why do people claim here the bible wouldn't mention Adam & Eve's daughters? The Bible outright says:
" 4 And after the birth of Seth, Adam went on living for eight hundred years, and had sons and daughters"
I admit, that's not much to be going by, but it's there. I mean, cut that bronze age goat herders some slack, even they would know that if the first human couple had only three sons it wouldn't work out.
Of course this would still leave the entirety of humanity as an inimaginable awfull case of incest...
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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