Fundamentalists and the Bible 01

8 Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let us go out to the field.'* And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

This, too, does not make sense. The story of the offerings is foolish on its own, but to also make it a reason for killing one's brother is ridiculous save that the writer (not God) had some reason to insert this. Each is said to have offered what must be considered a tithe, and it is not their hearts which are looked into, but what is correct as an offering according to some plan of the writers of the Bible. This has to be an error not making any sense at all. *****

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' He said, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?'

10 And the Lord said, 'What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!

11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.'

So now God is still talking to Cain and is concerned for Abel being killed. Did God offer any tools or expertise to Adam and Eve when they began? No, not that any know of, then God decides what offering is acceptable, but the Bible doesn't say how they knew they were to make an offering, or how, or what it was to be.

He decides to be concerned and caring, if it can be called that, and curses Cain for what he, God, initially precipitated. How is this God to be punished for causing the conflict in the first place, or even not caring about Adam and Eve initially? And why is Cain exiled from exile? What can be more harsh than thorns and thistles? And where are Adam and Eve to do their own punishing of their children? We're not told in the Bible. This is an error of omission by the writers of the Bible. *****

13 Cain said to the Lord, 'My punishment is greater than I can bear!

14 Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.'

15 Then the Lord said to him, 'Not so!* Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.' And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.

16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Weren't they all hidden from the face of God already?

Like Adam and Eve, there is much missing here, like the reason Cain is about to sin for something we're not told he's supposed to know, but doesn't—at least we aren't made aware of it if he was told. What does God expect Cain to feel in his confusion; how can he not be angry from his confusion, and only Abel to turn his anger to—one can't get angry at God, can one?

What all did God do or say to make Cain feel such anger that he kills his brother Abel? We're not told, just left to conclude as many have that Cain was a bad seed, but how could God have made a bad seed already since Cain is only his third experiment (and so far all three have gone awry as far as he's concerned).

From thorns and thistles to Adam and Eve, to a ground that will no longer yield its strength. Why make us suffer so? We're not told yet, but we are punished (by proxy), aren't we? Not a nice God these men have created.

Uh, who is this "anyone" who may meet and kill Cain? He's the only child Adam and Eve have at this time. If they had any others how could any "others" know Cain is to be hated if someone doesn't tell them to despise Cain? Will Adam and Eve follow Cain and tattle on him to other children they may have (since there are no others to tell)? And if Cain is to wander where none other exist, where would "anyone" be and know of Cain and his sin?

Oh, we're supposed to know that they had many more children, and Cain was supposed to be really old, and all those others had by Adam and Eve have already wandered off (and how could anyone blame them?), and started other lives away from where Adam and Eve lived. Okay, that makes sense, right? Right??? Hmm, or does it? No, this has to be an error. *****

Where's Nod—there's a lot of land east of Eden? If Eden was near the Euphrates, is Nod in Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India? And what is sevenfold vengeance? And what is the mark of Cain? It's all too much for us to be made to figure out what's in the mind of the man, or men, who wrote this. More, who named this land and when? Oh, yes, Moses, he who knew all and either wrote it, or had it written—at God's direction, of course, errors and all. At the least, this is an error of omission. **

17 Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch; and he built a city, and named it Enoch after his son Enoch.

Truly, where would Cain have found a wife? Whoever she's supposed to be, she had to have parents, and her parents had to have parents too. How is it that these people are suddenly there in a land we know nothing about save that the word Nod possibly means wander or to wander? This can only be explained as a fantasy made up by the writers to give Cain a wife when we are told that Adam and Eve begat humankind, and there are supposed to be no other people. For sure this is an error. *****

18 To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael the father of Methushael, and Methushael the father of Lamech.

19 Lamech took two wives; the name of one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

20 Adah bore Jabal; he was the ancestor of those who live in tents and have livestock.

21 His brother's name was Jubal; he was the ancestor of all those who play the lyre and pipe.

22 Zillah bore Tubal-cain, who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools. The sister of Tubal_cain was Naamah.

And the big question of the moment: Who was Cain's wife, and where did she come from? See the next set of verses for more confusion.

25 Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, for she said, 'God has appointed* for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.'

26 To Seth also a son was born, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the Lord.

The big thing here is that "people" began to invoke the name of the Lord. Who is this "Lord"? Is it God? And wasn't that what Cain and Abel were doing when they made their offerings? Or are no offerings made when "invoking" the name of the Lord? And what, or who, were these people that seemingly haven't known who God was? By the way, just what name did they use to "invoke" him? Yahweh wasn't yet invented. **

These verse are out of sequence if any of the preceding is to be able to be believed in any way. A third son is born, and already Cain has found a wife who had to be begotten by others that aren't supposed to be. Or did Cain's own parents have more sons, that we're not told about, before Seth, and much time has passed, sufficient to have led to another tribe who procreates faster than Adam and Eve? This is a bad and confusing error. *****

No, these are not things to be brought up in bible class and embarrass the teacher, or even the preacher who can't answer them either. But we can ask them if they are expected to be believed by one and all as literally the inerrant—without error—word of God.

And who was Seth's wife? Where did she come from? Again, the question of whether Adam and Eve bore so many more children that they constituted another tribe from whom Seth found a wife. Still, it would be incestuous for Seth is not said to have wandered away to "find" a wife.

This all stretches credulity such that an error has to be given for it as a whole. *****

There are 8 major and 3 probable errors in chapter 4.

Chapter 5

Adam's Descendants to Noah and His Sons

1 This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.

2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them 'Humankind'* when they were created.

3 When Adam had lived for one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.

4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.

5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.

This is a good place to delve into whom was Cain's wife since we now have a sequence and a part of a timeline with Adam being one hundred and thirty years at Seth's birth. Let's look at the sequence.

In chapter 4,verse 1, Cain is born. There is no word on when this happened.

In verse 2, Abel is born, a herder of sheep, and Cain is named a tiller of the ground.

In chapter 4, verse 14, when Cain is told to leave Eden after killing Abel, he says "...I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me."

In chapter 4, verse 15, the Lord said to him, 'Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.' And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.

In chapter 4, verse 16, we are told that Cain went from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod. A play on words meaning that wandering away from Eden is a land? Who knows, but he left.

In chapter 4, verse 17, we're immediately told that Cain knew his wife, and she bore Enoch. No word on where he found and married her, or who she is, or when she bore Enoch.

In chapter 4, verse 25, we're told "Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, for she said, 'God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.'

She has a man-child to replace Abel whom Cain murdered. Nothing about when, but implicit is that no other man has been born.

In this chapter, chapter 5, that Adam is 130 years old when Seth is born where the genealogy begins.

In chapter 3, verse 20, "The man [obviously Adam] named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all who live."

What do all of these verses, in their sequence of occurrence, tell us?

First, they seemingly tell us that no other man-child was born between Abel and Seth.

Second, they tell us that even if Adam and Eve had more daughters in between Abel and Seth being born, none of them could in anyone's imagination, leave home to wander alone, and come together with the only other one who wandered out there (in what has to be considered a vast wilderness) Cain, and thus marry him. That happening is less likely to happen than it is to find a slightly different needle in a mountain of near identical needles. Without help, she definitely would have died, or been subject to a predator that would surely have killed her. But the bible does not mention another woman until we're told Cain's wife birthed a son.

So what else does the bible tell us?

It more than strongly implies that there must have been other people out there who were not sons or daughters of Adam and Eve. This gives further credence to Cain's worrying about someone who may kill him, meaning that there is someone else out there. But why they would want to kill him, other than for being a stranger and easy prey, we have no idea.

God himself gives full credence to this by saying that none will kill Cain for he will put a distinguishing mark on him, and a curse of sevenfold vengeance on any who dares to kill him. This is not a tacit admission of other people, it is a verification of the presence of other people, and that had to be men who were not born to Adam and Eve for their next son was when Adam was one hundred and thirty years old. Either that, or it is an outright fabrication, but then that would fit in perfectly with all of these other errors.

If there were no other men born to Adam and Eve before Seth, and it is unreasonable to suggest that a daughter had sought out Cain in the wilderness, then there could be no other man to marry a sister to give birth to a wife for Cain.

This is an extraordinary error in the bible, a fallacy no one in the Fundamentalist crowd has seen, or one that they hoped no one else would see, and thus chose to ignore it. This is a biblical error, and an error of massive proportions. *****

There will be more on this in the next chapter.

If anything, it actually looks as if two or more men wrote these pieces of the bible story.

6 When Seth had lived for one hundred and five years, he became the father of Enosh.

Again, let's pause here for a moment and consider that Seth lived to one hundred and five when he had a son, and place the time from Adam's birth/creation to the time of the birth of Seth's child at two hundred and thirty-five years.

Where did Seth's wife come from? Again, it had to be a sister, or a woman not related to him, but according to the bible, Eve is the mother of all who live.

Alone as Adam and Eve were in the world, according to the bible, and no tools or knowledge of how to fend for themselves, or how to find food other than thorns and thistles, the stress of finding water, food, and shelter had to be such that Eve's body could not ovulate.

Combine that with Adam not having energy for not having mitochondria, it had to add more stress to both of them. Was making love even possible, difficult as things were for them? Stress of the magnitude that they had to endure would keep any woman's body from functioning properly. Not only that, but the stress had to mightily strain, and thereby shorten Adam's life. There had to be about five years of learning, and developing a routine of work to survive the harshness of the land they were set into if this were all to be believed, that is. And that leads us to:

Notes on pregnancy:

Since, according to Fundamentalists, what God created is immutable, we offer this: Eve had to have the same functioning of her body as would all of her daughters to this day.

That being the case, a woman has about 500 viable eggs in her reproductive lifetime starting with the time of her reproductive years, one being released every month, or twelve a year, with a possibility of two or possibly a third egg being ovulated at the same time, though that is unusual.

While pregnant, a woman does not normally ovulate, but time robs her of some eggs anyway (which is the normal effect time has on eggs, thus the 500 eggs available for a reproductive lifetime). However, after pregnancy, they just about had to wait to have another child for Eve would not have been able to work as she had before becoming pregnant, plus having to breast feed and care for her child without anything but instinctive knowledge to help her, and that being limited. That left the workload on Adam without much help. Again, stress, and motherly duty interfered with more childbirth, the stress being great on both of their persons, plus, Adam not having energy as he should have.

Five years to being pregnant with Cain makes sixty lost eggs. After pregnancy, assume two or three months of ovulation interruption from lactating as seems to be the case with many women. Also assume a couple of years at the very least for breast feeding until another pregnancy, that of Abel, and we have another twenty-one eggs lost for a total of eighty-one eggs lost while pregnant with Abel.

However, looking at the years of Adam until Seth's birth, she has been out of eggs long before that stated occurrence, so the chronology is unsupportable for the time of Seth's birth.

Why is she out of eggs? Simple math. To the time of Abel's birth, she has lost eighty-one eggs. If we use the assumptions above, Eve would have lost one hundred-twenty two years worth of eggs to Adam's 130th year (including taking away one year for being pregnant with Seth), a biological impossibility for the immutability of God's creation as said by Fundamentalists. Of course, Fundamentalists can, and will, probably say that God can do anything he wants, and how he wants, and when.

When the Old Testament was created, the men who did so had no knowledge of science as we have today. I'm not an expert on science, but almost any high school, and probably middle school, children do have more knowledge of science that those in the days the Bible was written, therefore it's easy to understand how so much of this is wrong in the writing, as well as the fact that God would know of all science, and not have made the mistakes that are here, and obviously by men.

If we look at the Old Testament with objective eyes, and the stated immutability of God's creation(s), the stated birth of Seth at Adam's age is not possible either. Like marriage, what God joined, let no man put asunder. We might also say let no Fundamentalist add to the word of God as if his perfect words must imply to them. There is no "imply" in the Fundamentalist lexicon when they speak of God, just God's word. This is another huge error for the Bible and for Fundamentalists. *****

Looking at it in this light, we can see where men must have created the story of Genesis, and God did not. We'll see more irrefutable proof of this in chapters 6 and 7 following.

Now the problem crops up again: where did Cain's wife come from among people that Eve could not, and did not, birth? This has to be another massive error in the bible, and against Fundamentalists. *****

And should any say that the eggs were not wasted due to Adam and Eve having daughters, thus interrupting ovulation, remember that time is an enemy of egg viability too.

And again, how believable is it that a daughter of Adam and Eve left on her own to wander, and thus find Cain, and marry him, if that is thought to be the case. Animals surely would have killed her as they may have Cain, but at least Cain had testosterone, thus a greater ability to fight and fend for himself. A young girl without knowledge could not. The thought of this as a possibility would be more than ludicrous.

7 Seth lived after the birth of Enosh for eight hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters.

8 Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years; and he died.

9 When Enosh had lived for ninety years, he became the father of Kenan.

10 Enosh lived after the birth of Kenan for eight hundred and fifteen years, and had other sons and daughters.

11 Thus all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years; and he died.

12 When Kenan had lived for seventy years, he became the father of Mahalalel.

13 Kenan lived after the birth of Mahalalel for eight hundred and forty years, and had other sons and daughters.

14 Thus all the days of Kenan were nine hundred and ten years; and he died.

15 When Mahalalel had lived for sixty-five years, he became the father of Jared.

16 Mahalalel lived after the birth of Jared for eight hundred and thirty years, and had other sons and daughters.

17 Thus all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred and ninety-five years; and he died.

18 When Jared had lived for one hundred and sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch.

19 Jared lived after the birth of Enoch for eight hundred years, and had other sons and daughters.

20 Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died.

21 When Enoch had lived for sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah.

22 Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah for three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters.

23 Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.

24 Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.

25 When Methuselah had lived for one hundred and eighty-seven years, he became the father of Lamech.