How Can 2 People Populate The Earth Without Running Into The Problem of Incest?

[Timothy Hunter]

Let's humor the thought for a second, the creationist hypothesis that a single pair of a man and a woman jumpstarted the human race and grew from there was true, wouldn't the effects of inbreeding kick in after a few generations?

[Zelena]

Yes, I suppose…

Actually, the human race already “suffers” from a lack of genetic diversity: the human race is less genetically diverse than the apes.
More, the humane population is more diverse in Africa than in the rest of the world because populations were constitued by a smaller group of individuals…

There’s a “sect” in Paris called “La Famille” (the family) that is a group of around 3000 people that must only reproduce among themselves: they have some rare diseases.

[Tami]

The way the various versions of the bible get around this is by having Adam and his immediate male descendants live to be anywhere from 100 to 950 years old and still able to father children. No idea about the women in this narrative.

So, I guess if you are a male who lives to be 700 years old and you can produce offspring with, not only your original female partner but with your daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and so on, that could be a whole lot of children.

But yeah, it would still be inbreeding and incest.

Actually, according to the most common biblical narratives, Eve was formed from Adam, which would make her either his daughter or his sister depending on how you look at it. Which complicates the story even more.

Many non-biblical origin stories of mankind don't have an 'Adam and Eve', but instead, have hundreds of people created by whatever deity the stories derive from.

[CSTowle]

Don't go looking for logic in a book of fairy tales. I mean, if'n you want to by all means knock yourself out. But don't expect to find any.

[CosmiComic]

I don't think it's meant to be taken literally.

[Tami]

I don't think it's meant to be taken literally.

It shouldn't be, but many, many people do.

It's even a Science Fiction Trope. A man and a woman are alone on an otherwise depopulated or empty planet and they say something to the effect that they will have to start over and repopulate the world.

[Powerboy]

Let's humor the thought for a second, the creationist hypothesis that a single pair of a man and a woman jumpstarted the human race and grew from there was true, wouldn't the effects of inbreeding kick in after a few generations?

Look at human history. Clearly, there was mental deficiency from inbreeding.

The stock answer of Creationists, ignoring the complete lack of evidence for their version of reality and the overwhelming evidence for, well reality, would be the standard "GodDoneIt". In other words, God caused the normal problems of inbreeding to not exist OR they did not apply to Adam and Eve.

We also have to assume a certain number of creations of large populations that the Bible fails to mention. For instance, after the Flood, there's only a passage of something like e century and the world seems well populated again.

As I said, to make this a viable story, we have to assume several omissions of information.