this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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History Memes

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submitted 5 days ago by NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org to c/historymemes@lemmy.world
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[–] callouscomic@lemmy.zip 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Growing up in all this (both school and church), I remember a few arguments teachers and church leaders would make:

  • Essentially there was a short period of "incest is okay to get things rolling" until it wasn't.
    • The sons had children with their mother to get that ball rolling.
    • There were tons of other kids not named and the siblings did it.
  • A theory about other people outside the garden of Eden. This is almost certainly true since some translations clearly imply the existence of other people/towns when Cain is leaving. This is also the most plausible answer.
  • We don't know cause Genesis was likely written by Moses thousands of years later from flawed oral history

Also, the same issue and questions arise again in some ways after the Flood and Noah's Ark. The resulting cousins all had kids together?

Mostly I remember these apologetics kind of discussions just got us in trouble for asking obvious questions and questioning logic.

While I massively criticize religion anymore, what I will say is that my belief was these religious scripts are possibly holding some truths, but the oral history, telephone game of it all, AND ancient peoples not knowing how to properly explain things results in what we have here, which, if taken literally, is fucking stupid.

It helps to think of the Bible and most religious texts as fables rather than history.

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 days ago

Yeah I think it is more a lit the metaphor of 'we are all family' and less about 'fuck your siblings'

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

While I massively criticize religion anymore, what I will say is that my belief was these religious scripts are possibly holding some truths, but the oral history, telephone game of it all, AND ancient peoples not knowing how to properly explain things results in what we have here, which, if taken literally, is fucking stupid.

It helps to think of the Bible and most religious texts as fables rather than history.

Yeah, this is the only reasonable way to look at it. Once you consider how little sense it makes, and also that all religions have some sort of origin story with the same level of truthiness, but being mutually exclusive, it makes all of them obviously wrong. I'm sure there's some reason the stories exist. Some event happened in the past, or some people trying to explain things based on their understanding. However, that doesn't make it true. Some of it can still be useful though as fables with moral lessons.

I'd advise against using any religious text for morals though, or you end up stoning people for someone's wife doing something wrong, or something like that. They might have been useful at the time, but I feel we have better ways of teaching morality now. Most people don't need to think there's some guy in the sky watching them to not be evil.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 1 points 3 days ago

A theory about other people outside the garden of Eden.

Whenever I picture religious debates and arguments, I think of this scene from Halo 2. Nay, it was heresy!

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Sounds like the kind of thing you want to wager your soul on.