56777 Adam and Eve's children

[Damasta]

Neither of the writers who answered this question mentioned it, so I will. Moses 5:2–3 explicitly says that Adam and Eve's sons and daughters began to pair off. And v. 28 says that Cain took one of his brother's daughters to wife.

However, I also speculate that Moses 1:34 and 4:26 could be implying that more people were placed on the earth after the Fall. After all, the Scriptures and modern prophets are clear that Adam and Eve were the first humans created; but they never say that they were the only humans created. But either way it seems that the Lord compensated in some way or another for the dangers of inbreeding.

[vorpal blade]

It is my understanding that the problem with inbreeding is that certain genetic defects can become dominant. In the absence of genetic defects--as in human beings freshly created by God--those defects may not be presence. You can also accentuate some positive traits by inbreeding. Breeders do this deliberately today. Over a period of many generations imperfections in our DNA arose making inbreeding very risky. That's a theory I've heard that makes sense to me.

[Commander Keen]

Damasta - Thanks for bringing that up...I neglected to mention that scripture. Oh, and same with what vb said.

Seriously, you think people would be able to figure these things out with their own logic, buuuuuut...I suppose not. There's even a fun pending question about marrying first cousins that has made me realize that we have so many ridiculous social constructs. Bah.

[Gimgimno]

Damasta - Thanks for bringing that up...I neglected to mention that scripture. Oh, and same with what vb said.

Seriously, you think people would be able to figure these things out with their own logic, buuuuuut...I suppose not. There's even a fun pending question about marrying first cousins that has made me realize that we have so many ridiculous social constructs. Bah.

THAT IS ONE OF THE DICIEST QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF DICEY QUESTIONS.

[Gimgimno]

Damasta - Thanks for bringing that up...I neglected to mention that scripture. Oh, and same with what vb said.

Seriously, you think people would be able to figure these things out with their own logic, buuuuuut...I suppose not. There's even a fun pending question about marrying first cousins that has made me realize that we have so many ridiculous social constructs. Bah.

THAT IS ONE OF THE DICIEST QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF DICEY QUESTIONS.

P.S. Hopefully that question wasn't asked by anybody that posts around here, because then I would feel pretty lousy...

[Wisteria]

Small correction, Vorpal. The problem with inbreeding isn't that traits become dominant. It's that certain recessive traits become more prevalent within a family- if your grandfather has a bad gene- or more correctly, a deleterious allele- for cystic fibrosis, then the odds that both you and your cousin have a deleterious allele for cystic fibrosis, that you both inherited from your grandfather, is higher than the probability that you and a non relative that you marry will both have a deleterious cystic fibrosis gene. It's actually really interesting to see how quickly the level of inbreeding drops with each generation.



As a geneticist, my non-doctrinal speculation is pretty close to what Vorpal said- I figure that Adam and Eve had no alleles that would give them genetic ailments, and therefore none of their children or grandchildren did. But DNA polymerase in a fallen world is more prone to introducing incorrect segments into the DNA, so eventually the problems associate with inbreeding evolved.

[NerdGirl]

P.S. Hopefully that question wasn't asked by anybody that posts around here, because then I would feel pretty lousy...

Don't worry, it wasn't me, even though I am Canadian. All four of my adult male first cousins are already safely married to non-relatives.

[vorpal blade]

Okay, Wisteria, I'll go with what you said.

I had a missionary companion once who had an unusual theory about it. He figured that before the flood there was a heavy layer of water vapor, clouds I suppose, which blocked harmful rays from reaching the earth. God triggered the water to fall from the sky flooding the earth. After a time the water found its way to underground caverns, or something like that, so dry ground appeared again. With the cloud layer gone people on earth were able to see for the first time a rainbow. I suppose this means they were now able to see the sun. Now harmful rays could strike humans. This introduced impurities (? this missionary was French and I didn't always understand him completely) in the human body. It was no longer safe to marry your sibling. Also, people stopped living for centuries, as they had before.

Just a wild, speculative thought.

[Wisteria]

Huh. Interesting idea, but UV radiation would have a hard time penetrating far enough into a human body to damage germ line cells (sperm and eggs), which is what has to happen in order for mutations to be passed on to the next generation. But it can definitely be fun to speculate (as long as one keeps the perspective that it's just speculation )

[Damasta]

"Here let me say that therein consisted the fall—the eating of things unfit, the taking into the body of the things that made of that body a thing of earth[...]. The fall was a natural process, resulting through the incorporation into the bodies of our first parents of the things that came from food unfit, through the violation of the command of God regarding what they should eat[...]. [...]they disobeyed the law of God, in eating things they were told not to eat[...]

• —From an address by James E. Talmage at the Eighty-fourth Semiannual Conference of the Church, Oct. 6, 1913; Conference Report, pp. 118–19; quoted in Jesus the Christ, 1981, Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, pp. 28–29.

I'd say that trumps the "protective water vapor in the sky theory" (which is kind of a ridiculous theory anyway).

[Commander Keen]

Damasta - Thanks for bringing that up...I neglected to mention that scripture. Oh, and same with what vb said.

Seriously, you think people would be able to figure these things out with their own logic, buuuuuut...I suppose not. There's even a fun pending question about marrying first cousins that has made me realize that we have so many ridiculous social constructs. Bah.

THAT IS ONE OF THE DICIEST QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF DICEY QUESTIONS.

But is it only dicey to you because society has trained you to THINK that it's dicey? Ooooooooh!....

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Oooohhh!!!!

Cue high school style yelling.

[vorpal blade]

"Here let me say that therein consisted the fall—the eating of things unfit, the taking into the body of the things that made of that body a thing of earth[...]. The fall was a natural process, resulting through the incorporation into the bodies of our first parents of the things that came from food unfit, through the violation of the command of God regarding what they should eat[...]. [...]they disobeyed the law of God, in eating things they were told not to eat[...]

• —From an address by James E. Talmage at the Eighty-fourth Semiannual Conference of the Church, Oct. 6, 1913; Conference Report, pp. 118–19; quoted in Jesus the Christ, 1981, Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, pp. 28–29.

I'd say that trumps the "protective water vapor in the sky theory" (which is kind of a ridiculous theory anyway).

I'm not one to contradict James E. Talmage.

It is a ridiculous theory, but allow me to do a little more justice to it. I never meant to imply that the protective water vapor prevented death, or is associated with the Fall. It supposedly is associated with Noah, not Adam. There was death in the world because of Adam, but until Noah the people lived long lives. After Noah the length of a lifetime began to drop rapidly. Also, we are talking here about being able to marry brothers and sisters or cousins. It was okay before the Flood (not the Fall), but after the Flood and after the removal of the protective water vapor layer some harmful rays now introduced imperfections in human bodies which were more likely to be seen with inbreeding than they were before the Flood. Or, what Wisteria said.

So the loss of the protective layer shortened lifespans after Noah, but death was already in the world because of Adam. At the same time (the Flood) the loss of the protective layer gradually introduced genetic imperfections, or however you say it, making inbreeding increasingly unadvisable.

Okay, trash the theory now. Hopefully you now understand better the theory you are trashing.

[Marduk]

That's an interesting theory Vorpal; I'd never heard it before. One of the issues I have with it, though, is why did this vapor not descend until the flood? I mean, certainly we can say "God did it" but did some law change? Why suddenly then, and never before? The way I understand (limitedly; my knowledge here is not extensive, I admit) physical science is that vapor rises into the air, and condenses once there is enough of it, and falls to the earth. Obviously something changed to cause the flood, but I don't like the idea that the fundamental nature of physical law changed.

I tend to lean more towards theories that there was a physical change in human physiology that was responsible for shortening life expectancies, moreso than an external change. It would be logical to make a connection to say, whatever changed in physiology cause enough of a change to make our genetics more volatile, and predisposed to mutation. But again, this is not my area of expertise, so I don't pretend to know a lot about it.

[NerdGirl]

Believe it or not, I have actually heard Vorpal's missionary companion's theory before.

[Tao]

Believe it or not, I have actually heard Vorpal's missionary companion's theory before.

Aye, as have I. If I recall correctly, it was some astronomical event (passing comet/astroid/wormwood) that was to disturb the vapor canopy enough to instigate the torrential rains.

Sadly, if you try to imagine the amount of water needed to even cover a 1 km mountain existing in a vapor layer, you'd have to also imagine antediluvian living conditions corresponding thereunto. They say people get depressed in Seattle living under the cloud cover, imagine having never seen stars, nor moonlight, with little-to-no sunlight, atmospheric pressure being increased by a factor of 100, not to mention the latent heat needed to keep so much water up there. If such a theory held water, (heh, sorry) our antediluvian ancestors were actually born into a global pressure cooker.

Makes monkeys into marriageable cousins, if you think about it too long.

[vorpal blade]

Well, it is not my intention to defend too strongly a theory that I believe has serious problems.

But, for the sake of what might be an interesting discussion, as I recall there was a little more to the theory. I believe that the atmosphere tends to get cooler as you get further from the earth, but at a certain point it starts to get warmer again. Normally water vapor isn't found that high in the atmosphere past where the air gets warmer. But, apparently there is a large, stable, region of the atmosphere that if there were water in that region it would be unable to fall to the earth in the steady state situation. Since this region is many miles above the earth, and is many miles thick, it can actually hold a great deal of water. If you can get the water into that region there is no place for it to go, so it just stays there. I think the physics might be a little shaky on that. Why doesn't it just fly off into space? There would be a balance of forces, gravity on the one hand, and the attraction of the vacuum of space on the other. We do know that the present situation is stable, but I don't know if more water vapor couldn't also be a stable situation.

According to this theory we understand Genesis a little differently than you might be used to. We read

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

So, apparently God divided the waters so that there was water above the heaven, and water below the heaven. The water under the heaven was gathered together into the oceans and seas that we know about. The Book of Abraham shows us that another word for this heaven is "expanse." What about the water above the heaven? According to this theory this is the atmospheric water vapor region we have been talking about.

So, this water vapor, or waters above the heaven is physically stable and is maintained by the energy of the sun. It is an atmospheric phenomena having to do with the sun's heating of the atmosphere. I don't think it would increase our atmospheric pressure, or greatly increase our temperature. There would be again a balance between heat being trapped near the earth, and the cooling effect of the refection of the sun's light off the waters above the heaven. Sunlight absorbed by the water would reradiate into the near zero temperature of space, with some of it reradiated to the earth. Its hard to say what the net effect would be. I suppose we could look to see what happens on other planets, such as Venus. In my lifetime, however, theories have changed so drastically about what we thought we knew about other planets that I don't know what we know today. And I'm not sure I believe the scientists anyway. They've been wrong too often.

Then, something disturbs the equilibrium. Maybe it is a comet. Maybe some volcano blasts millions of tons of particles high into the atmosphere which acts as a catalyst or nucleation of the water vapor into water drops which then rain down on the earth. Or sunspots, or some such natural phenomena.

Anyway, just a theory.

[NerdGirl]

It does have problems, but it's actually one of the more well-thought-out theories I've heard since it at least attempts to use the scriptures and a bit of science to back it up.

I think the worst theory I've ever heard to explain why people stopped living so long came from the father of a girl I went to elementary school with. His idea was that when God sent the water down for the flood, it wasn't normal water, but some kind of crazy poison water, because He was worried that a simple flood might not kill everyone. So enough of it leaked into the ark that it didn't kill Noah and his family, but they all got cancer from it and died early. And now the poison is in all of our bodies, and we live short lives. And this was also supposed to explain why all the dinosaurs died, including aquatic dinosaurs (because dinosaurs didn't fit on the ark so they didn't get to go). But other aquatic animals were somehow immune, as were plants.

[bismark]

I had a Chem professor at BYU talk about how he wanted to compile a book of shaky-at-best science used to explain Gospel principles. I ought to email him this thread..

[Wisteria]

. . . He was worried that a simple flood wouldn't kill everyone? Wow.