Matt Gunterman June 8th, 2007

Like I said in a previous post, in Sunday school when I was growing up (and I come from a family that was and still is a if-the-doors-are-open-we’re-at church kinda family), we were taught that the origin of Cain and Abel’s wives was insignificant. I mean, if you’re going to believe that God can make the whole of Creation in six days, why be so terribly worried about where a few measly dames came from? Why is it such a stretch of the imagination — I mean, faith — that God could create them out of thin air as the circumstances warranted?

But that’s not good enough for the people at Kentucky’s brand-spanking-new, world-class Creation Museum. Why? Because they’re anticipating that same-sex marriage advocates will be perusing their Bibles to poke holes in scripturally based arguments against same-sex marriage.

If I were an opponent of this mind, I’d simply reply, “You know, they weren’t brother and sister,” but the Creationists desire greatly to have science on their side. Having God and faith isn’t good enough. They want the science, too.

My favorite part of this spiel below? The transition “…before jumping to conclusions.” Why not give the same tolerant pause to homosexuals? Sounds like a rather Christian perspective to me. Also, I’m puzzled by the phrase of “one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage)” because that equation was very malleable throughout the biblical era.

Here we go, and it’s a wild ride (image of sign provided below):

Where did Cain get his wife?

Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the lad of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch (Genesis 4:16-17).

The Bible teaches that Adam was “the first man” and that Eve was the “mother of all living” (1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20). All humans are descendants of these two people.

Genesis 5:4 teaches that Adam and Eve had sons and daughters. So, originally, brothers had to marry sisters.

Before jumping to conclusions, realize that

1. All humans are related. So whenever someone gets married, they marry a relative.

2. One of the most honored men of the Bible, Abraham, was married to his half sister. It wasn’t until much later that God instructed the Israelites not to marry close relatives–a principle we follow today.

3. When close relatives marry today, there is an increased likelihood of deformities in the offspring, because of the mutations (mistakes) that have accumulated in the human race since Adam’s sin. The closer the relatives, the more likelihood such people will have similar mistakes. If these mutations are inherited in offspring from both parents, then there is an increased probability of major physiological problems.

4. The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutations in the human population would be. At the time of Adam and Eve’s children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome–thus close relatives could marry, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying in early biblical history.

5. In present usage, the word incest includes both the marriage of close relatives and any sexual activity between close relatives who are not married. Sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage, whether between near relatives or not, has been wrong from the beginning. Marriage between close relatives, however, was not a problem in early biblical history.

6. Since God is the One who defined marriage in the first place, God’s Word is the only standard for defining proper marriage. People who do not accept the Bible as their absolute authority have no basis for condemning someone like Cain marrying his sister.

• Anti-Science Agenda , Creation Museum , Creationism
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