The Forebears Paradox

I have two parents. They had two parents each, which means I had four
grandparents. They in turn each had two parents, which means I had
eight great-grandparents. In other words, the number of people required
to make me doubles with each generation the further back we go. By the
time of the ancient Romans the number of people needed to make me
exceeds the number of people who have ever been born. There's something
clearly wrong here.

Incest might account for some of it; my mother and father might have
had different mothers but, unknowingly, had the same father. It seems
to me, however, that this argument would require incest to be the the
rule rather than the exception. A partial explanation could be that of
trans-generational marriages, i.e. a man marries a woman young enough
to be his daughter, thus there wouldn't necessarily be the doubling of
forebears with each generation.

The Creationists have an answer that resolves the paradox: it all
started with Adam and Eve whose children married each other and so
began the family tree of which we are the most recent branches.
However, this solution relies too heavily on the practise on incest,
which the Bible itself condemns. There's nothing in the Bible, as some
claim, that says God permitted it in the beginning and suspended the
laws of nature to allow inbreeding; that's just an attempt to salve the
phenomena. While one can't deny the reality of miracles, a solution
that satisfies both sacred scripture and the secular world view would
be preferable.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Funky 7/21: And its official.
    ... only reason he wanted to find out about his parents was to avoid ... I thought all of us creepy evil-minded comics readers ... incest only came up on RACS and in the spoof strip "Funky ...
    (rec.arts.comics.strips)
  • Re: Lack of insight "explains" everything with "chance"...
    ... If your two parents hadn't bonded just when they did --possibly to the second, possibly to the nanosecond -- you wouldn't be here. ... Go back just eight generations to the time that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born, and already there are over 250 people on whose timely couplings your existence depends. ... Continue further, to the time of Shakespeare and the Mayflower pilgrims, and you have no fewer than 16,384 ancestors earnestly exchanging genetic material in a way that would, eventually and miraculously, result in you. ... You couldn't be here without a little incest -- actually quite a lot of incest -- albeit at a genetically discreet remove. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Funky 7/21: And its official.
    ... only reason he wanted to find out about his parents was to avoid ... Now that he's done the deed, any curiousity about the ... incest only came up on RACS and in the spoof strip "Funky ...
    (rec.arts.comics.strips)
  • Re: ISLAM IS EVIL!
    ... And some more incest. ... Amram marries his aunt Jochebed; these are Moses' parents. ...
    (soc.culture.african.american)
  • Re: Chronic Depression
    ... nothing wrong with having sex with his cousin in his parents' bed", ... > Incest is relatively boring. ... Prev by Date: ...
    (alt.os.windows-xp)
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