Because the story of Adam and Eve is a creation myth designed to explain billions of years of planet and species evolution designed by God/Yahweh/SpaghettiMonster in a way that tribal humans and "everybody's gods are okey-dokey" Romans living in the Mediterranean could understand.

I swear, of all the ways that God could have used to create the universe, you'd think humans would be smart enough not to think it was the dumbest, simplest one...

Oh, and people, let us not forget that the Bible has been translated a freakin' billion times.  Probably the worst one was by a King.  I believe his name was James.  He was a moron.  You're reading a book that was ordered translated by a moron.  Way to go.

But I digress.

Know anything about quantum physics?  There's a whole mess of crazy in that stuff, things that'd make a bomb go off in your brain cage were you to ever try to contemplate it all. 

We've only just gotten started on that mess, who knows where it could lead.  Copper acting like steel at a micro level, that's just the beginning mate.  Hell, they only just discovered a massive, invisible energy field creating matter recently.  Yeah, IT CREATES MATTER.  We gots a loooong way to go.

I mean, we don't even know what causes gravity yet!  All we know is that it exists and has something to do with the relative mass of given objects!

I think that technology is the study of facts and that religion is a case of faith.

I for one trust science more then I trust religion. Simple reason is that we can touch science and we can prove it right and or wrong. As for religion we are always asked to take it on faith. I hate it when somebody says to em Trust me...  yeah right...

Everything that exist as an explaination that is logical and given enough time we will understand everything we want to understand.

There is a reason why religion was so powerful in the past, because people were ignorant and were kept in ignorance. Now that we learn more and more people start to question and when that happens religion looses it's power.

I watched a documentary not long ago there is a city in the united states that want Darwin tgheory of Evolution removed from schools and replaced with Genesis from the bible. When I heard that I could not believe it. The only way for rel;igion to survive is to supress new knowledge. Wehter it true or not the fact that we question (we can do this because of technology) religion is diminished.

I think and this is a personal opinion given enough time Religion is doomed. Of course God could always show up during a baseball game and talked to us that would change things a bit I think

Technology and knowledge is the only way to go.

First of all the Bible was never ment to be a history book. Even so, never has the Bible been unable to stand against any test, never has any flaw been found in it... Can any human author a book so perfectly? Simply put, The answer is no. Religion is man-made, Faith is not... Can the universe have come into being so perfectly without a divine Creator? It takes more faith to belive that there was no Creator that that there was one! Keep in mind, God could have created the world any way He wanted to, and for as long as He wanted to the "days" referenced in Genisis are not days as we think of them, the Hebrew word for day or "Yom" means an extended period of time, or an age... so it may very well be possible that it took "milions of years" to create. Also, there is evidence of a flood as referenced in Genisis... in fact not only the Bible, but many other manuscripts reference such an event. I could go on for a long time with "evidence" of a Creator, but truly, you just have to put your faith in it.

You're quite right, im not a historian, nor do i pretend to be.  as for the wives/relitives of Cain and Abel you must know that Adam and Eve lived for a VERY long time, If i remember correctly it was close to a 1000 years... during that time Eve gave birth to countless children.

Genisis 4:1-2 ¹ Adam ^[a] lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. ^[b] She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth ^[c] a man." ² Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

The atmosphere of the Earth was much different before the flood, alowing people to live for much longer periods of time. So really it's not all that crazy to think that there were quite a few people a thousand years or so after creation. No offence, but i would like to know more what you mean by "horrifyingly absurd stuff". The Bible is not full of inconsitancies, in the old Testament there were countless prophacies about the coming of Jesus... All of them came true, no man can predict that perfectly.

That's usually how religion works... 

I can't prove anything but trust me it's true...

And it's not arrogance to think we can understand things. We were made with all the tools we need to understand what is around us. There is no reason up to know anyway to prove we cannot understand everything that exist in our universe. On the other hand we have tons of proof that demonstrate that with patience and hard work we can undertstand. In less then 100 years we went from we will never fly to having Voyager 2 which is now almost out of the solar system...  less than a 100 years....  impressive if you ask me and god did nothing at all to help us in this....we did it all by ourselves with technology and our MINDS...  He must be very proud of us...

While I am writting this something jumped at me...  For the last what 3000 years we have had religion and what since the last what 50 years or so people have been starting to really question religion and now we are making the biggest leaps in technology. Is it that religion as been holding us back or is it just a coincidence...

I was raised in the faith by my parents and I have been to mass and all that. I will always question blind faith because to not question things is not within our nature. We are made in such a way that we are curious and as a race we need to understand.

God gave us a mind....  and the bible.... that's what I mean by blind faith.

And that list I think a few of them were brought to trial by the church for going against doctrine....  oh well 

Unless you can quote in the original language it was written in, none of this means anything.

Even if God himself descended from the heavens and wrote the thing himself, which even the Bible says he did not, then a bunch of people still took it upon themselves to translate the thing.

Case in point, Colossians 3:22 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched in order to please them, but with a sincere heart, fearing the Lord."

God thinks slavery is ok now eh?  Moreover, God is implied as actively punishing those who disobey their masters, hence the need to "fear".  Guess we should have rethought some amendments in the U.S. Constitution, seeing as how God Himself prefers obedient slaves.

Course, "Slave" is sometimes translated as "servant".

See where i'm going?  Pick whichever one you like, they're both wrong if they aren't the original.

Thank you for the above post, it is always good to have a reasonable conversation about faith without people putting their hands over their ears and screaming or getting angry.

EDIT Additionally, I am fully aware of the social, economic, and spiritual nature of ancient history and why slavery would be considered so important at the time of the Bible's creation, I was merely using it as an example to make the point that such things, in this case the society that created it, should be considered when looking at the Bible in any light, historical or otherwise.

Edit2.0 You are also correct in the nature of slavery in the Greco-Roman age.  Slavery was an inherent part of any economy and so important that former slaves, when freed, would often own slaves, very different from the land-based slaves and the social Darwinism present in American slavery.

However, slavery in its basic form, that you are in essence the property of another human being and subject to his or her will, is unchanged, regardless of how slaves were treated by the general population.

It is quite the simple thing to have a debate without becoming upset, for after all as Voltaire said, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  Of course, that is translated French so who knows if it is correct or not

My concer is with the argument of Faith as being the definitive end of any discussioin on religion.  Humans are limited argument = well faith in God creating us and the universe as perfect means we can understand anything.  The Bible being full of errors, contradiction, etc. = having faith in God giving us the True Word means it must be perfect too.

Faith is a catch-all argument.  It allows people to make a claim without having anything to back it up in any way whatsoever.

I, for one, would like to believe that God, being perfect, would not give us minds and the ability to think rationally without an expectation of us using it for our benefit.  Additionally, I cannot see that as a trick or way of testing us because I have faith that such a perfect and good God would not be so petty and evil as to mess with the minds of His own creation.

Why must Faith and Reason necessarily be separate?

Im sorry if i seem argumenitive in any way. I'm just pointing out the error in your thinking, yes faith does indeed involve sometimes not having and hard evidence to back it up, but it wouldnt be faith if that werent the case would it? God is my no means evil, he gave us the CHOICE to be evil... If you are a gunmaker and someone buys your gun and ends up shooting someone, who gets blamed? the creator, or the one who abused the creation? Again, i dont see what you mean by the Bible contradicting itself... sometimes it might seem that way, but really you just have to understand whats going on. As for the slave reference, God says to obey your masters... God puts us in situations for a reason, we should be obediant and cheerful while in those situations. Just as God puts our parents over us and tells us to "obey your father and mother" 

It is my opinion that God created Adam and Eve with a very large gene pool, and It has dwindled since then, resulting in birth defects among families inter marrying in this age. Sure a lot of DNA is the same as primates, but have evolutionists ever found the transition betwen the 2 creatures? according to the bible God created animals "according to their kind" im sure that some animas have adapted over time, but not changed into somthing else completely.

This is actually something I'm curious about as well. There are plenty of evolutionists in Christian Acadamia, I'm not sure I'm one of them (Does where I came from matter so much as how I live my life and where I'm going?) But something I have always sort of been curious about is the similar DNA argument. I mean really, if you were a omnipotent God and you made all the animals (within species, I'm not far gone enough to believe that God created Beagles and Dauschounds[sp?] separately in the beginning and they stayed the same since) even with the deviations time would bring, wouldn't you take the best suited parts of everything you had created in order to make the 'pinnacle' creation? Now granted we don't have the absolute best of everything, but our bodies are uniquely suited to adaptability in extreme environments, and its our physiology that offers this. Now yes this argument works for evolution too (it was these mutations/adaptations that allowed us to survive, etc.) but is it really so hard to believe that an omnipotent being would re-use parts/ideas? 

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not bashing, I am genuinely curious as to whether anyone thinks this is even a possability. Like I said, I'm not sure what I believe in this area anyway.

You talk up human physiology in your post, but if you wanted to design an upright walking creature from whole cloth, you wouldn't use our skeleton. One of the reason we get backaches and other such things is because our bodies are not "well designed" for walking erect. Oh, we can do it, and we can do it with fairly minimal problems, but our skeletons are not what you would build if you wanted to make a living thing walk on two legs.

Humans are "good enough" at walking erect, not the perfection at it you would expect a supreme being to bring into existence.

It isn't so much that it's hard to believe that God might reuse parts/ideas, but that things are not as perfect a fit at doing what they currently do as they would be if they were created by an omnipotent being.

That's actually one of those misconceptions people often have about species, biology and evolution.

What exactly is "something else"? What does it mean for a species to become "something else"? How do you know when it is "something else" from what the population used to be?

For multicellular life, the definition of species is this: two populations that can interbreed and produce viable offspring are the same species. For biologists, it is easy to know when something has become "something else": when one population can no longer interbreed with another.

Evolution does not predict "chimeras": that is, some half creature, like a horse/hippoptamus, or a half-crocadile/half-duck or some other such absurdity. What makes the general diversity of life work is the successive accumulation of changes that eventually makes two populations that used to be of the same species no longer able to interbreed. Eventually, further changes will differentiate the two populations to the point where you would not immediately recognize them as being related without detailed study.

Evolution predicts transitional forms. Not "one thing we currently know now turning into something we also currently know now," but species which share common characteristics from both the parent and the evenetual child. They don't have to actually be the direct parent of that child, however.

Take Archeopteryx, for example. It is a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. However, as we currently understand things today, it is not necessarily the single species from which all modern birds are derived. It is more likely an extinct sibling of the earlier species. Transitional species do not have to be the direct root of that particular branch of the tree; it simply needs to share the common characteristics of the two siblings. For example, it shares feathers with its avian cousins, but it shares the teeth and hand bone structure of dinosaurs. Indeed, one Archeopteryx fossile was found that had so faint feather fossiles that it was initally classified as a particular species of dinosaur raptor before they corrected their mistake. Archeopteryx was a child of the same parent species that started the avian line as we currently understand it.

Life is very malleable. It is not as rigid and set as it appears, and even the apparently rigid distinction of "species" is in question. For example, there is something called a "ring species". That is, you start with a population in environment 1. Some of the move to environment 2; once in a new environment, they develop different characteristics unique to that environment. However, these are not sufficient to speciate them, so they can still interbreed with those in environment 2. Some from #2 move to environment 3, where again they develop new characteristics. These can interbreed fully with those from environment 2. And we do it again with environments 4 and 5.

If environment 5 happens to be adjacent to environment 1 (it forms a "ring"), what often happens is that the guys in environment 5 are so different that they cannot actually interbreed with those in environment 1. Even though they can interbreed with the ones in environment 4, who can interbreed with those in 3, who can interbreed with those in 2, who can interbreed with those in 1. But the ones currently in environment 5 cannot directly interbreed with those in environment 1.

This is a well known and documented phenomenon.

Ah, I was under the impression that much of humanities health problems came from our own dang fault. Malnutrition, environmental toxicity, etc. Well you learn something new everyday I guess

IRT Mooster: I'm actually quite a fan of the axiom (is it an axiom, or a law? I can't remember which...) that says "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable(sp?) from magic."

Eventually you gotta figure technology is gonna look radically different from what it does now. I mean who would have dreamt up electricity in the 'dark ages'? And I somehow doubt Edison imagined OLEDs, much less memory metals and nano fibers.

I'm not sure where its all going, but I'm glad I get to be along for the ride. I jusst wish it didn't take away from things like community so much (and I mean physical next door neighbor community, I know tech has done wonderful things for the world community)