The Biblical Adam and Eve were real people

Thank you for accepting, Pro. Here is a breakdown of my opening argument: 1. Fossils 2. Incest 3. Evolution 4. Aging 1. Fossils The general consensus is that Adam and Eve were created several millennia ago, around 4000 BC [1]. If they were the first man and woman, then how does one account for the multitudes of fossils found by archaeologists dating long before that, which are very clearly human? Take some of the earlier human fossils dating from the Mesolithic era [2]. Not only do they date back long before Eden supposedly existed, but they were found in regions all over the world, not just the Fertile Crescent. The modern human species, Homo sapiens, first developed from Homo heidelbergensis from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago [3]. We are, in fact, part of a great evolutionary tree of subhuman species, including Neanderthalis, Erectus, and Habilis. We know this because scientists use fossil records to trace changes in anatomy, diet, brain size, and migratory patterns through these "breeds" of human back to our ape ancestors [4]. The overwhelming majority of scientists support these records as factual, since their age was determined with radiocarbon dating, an extremely reliable method of measuring how long ago an organism was alive [5]. Since they clearly contradict Scripture, Pro must argue that either the records are unreliable, or the scientists are. 2. Incest According the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first two humans and the ancestors of all people that would come after. God did not directly create any other humans, going by Genesis 3:20, which states "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living." [6]. Therefore, the only way they could have populated the Earth is with copious amounts of interbreeding between family members. As most of us know, incest is not only morally wrong, but leads to many genetic disorders, diseases, and defects [7]. Humans, and many animals, need a sufficient amount of genetic variation to survive and adapt as a species for more than a few generations. To obtain the amount of variation needed to create a viable population of humans, scientists estimate 160 individuals as the absolute minimum number [8], let alone two. Let us move on to the moral problems caused by this incestual issue. In the Book of Leviticus, supposedly written by Moses, who according to Judeo-Christian tradition received direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit, we see laws specifically prohibiting incest of any kind. In the eighteenth chapter, sexual relations with one's siblings, parents, and other relatives are all strictly forbidden [9]. Keeping this in mind, let us examine Genesis 4:17, reading "Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch." Many scholars are baffled by this passage because there is no previous mention of Cain having a wife. Because Eve is "mother of all the living", God cannot have created a wife for Cain, so we are left with two options: 1. Cain married his sister, or more disturbingly, 2. Cain married Eve herself. Both of these options are vile sins according to the Laws of Moses. One could argue that because Adam and Eve were affected by original sin and expelled from Eden, their children were forced to indulge in sinful acts just to survive. But early on in Genesis, even before the Fall, God explicitly commands Adam and Eve to reproduce. "Be fruitful and multiply", He says to them, in spite of the fact that the only way they can multiply is with the wicked act of inbreeding. I accuse God of contradicting Himself. You might say that God's laws have changed between pre-Flood and Mosaic times, but Scripture makes no mention of this. 3. Evolution Evolution is a scientific fact. Humans did not come about spontaneously, created from dust and/or ribs, but diverged from the apes in a complex process that took millions upon millions of years. The fossil evidence I mentioned earlier lends great support to evolution, as well as the similarities of the human genome to those of primates, particularly the chimpanzee [10]. As many know, there is only a small percentage of difference in DNA between the human and chimp. This fact, combined with the numerous fossils leading back to Africa, shows that we are very closely related to the great apes, and in fact belong in the primate family. The empirical proof is so overwhelming that evolution cannot be described as a mere theory, but as an undeniable truth. I will return briefly to the idea of genetic variation. If everyone on the planet is descended from only two individuals, how did different races come about? If Genesis is to be believed, every single human being on the Earth would contain only mixtures of Adam and Eve's DNA, but we are so diverse that the very idea is impossible. While all human races are the same species, Homo sapiens, scientists sometimes describe them as "subspecies". The five major subspecies of human diverged over tens of thousands of years, spreading all across the planet [11]. One common defense I have heard was the Tower of Babel story told in Genesis 11, where God divides humanity and scatters them around the world. However, the story only mentions that different languages came about as a result; it says nothing of culture or skin color. And still, two or three thousand years is far too short a time for racial differences to form. 4. Aging According to Genesis 5:3, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and was fertile for much of that time, judging by his having a son at 130 years of age. How could this have come about? The oldest person on record was Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman who survived 122 years [12], not much in comparison to Adam, and she had access to modern healthcare unavailable to Adam. If we examine Genesis, Adam and Eve's close descendants lived for many hundreds of years, but after Noah, the lifespan slowly evens out to what it is today. Perhaps the gift of immortality, which Adam and Eve were given in Eden, is gradually lost over time. That makes sense in the context of the myth, but it contradicts science. In the Neolithic era, which the supposed Edenic period falls into chronologically, the average life expectancy for humans was only 20-33 years, due to disease, predators, and climate [13]. Indeed, the world was a very deadly place in ancient times, even in Scripture. In Genesis 3:17, God curses the ground as punishment for original sin, saying "through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life". How is it that ten generations of men, from Adam to Noah, all lived for hundreds of years, apparently not succumbing to starvation, disease, or murder? Many horrible creatures walked the Earth, including, according to some fundamentalist theologians, dinosaurs. I must ask Pro if he believes that dinosaurs and humans coexisted with each other, and if not, his thoughts on how dinosaur fossils relate to Eden. These are not all of my arguments, but I simply ran out of space this round. I thank Pro again for accepting, and I look forward to his rebuttal. SOURCES: 1. https://gracethrufaith.com...; 2. https://en.wikipedia.org...; 3. http://humanorigins.si.edu... 4. http://humanorigins.si.edu... 5. http://ncse.com... 6. https://www.biblegateway.com... 7. http://helorimer.people.ysu.edu... 8. https://www.newscientist.com... 9. https://www.biblegateway.com... 10. http://humanorigins.si.edu... 11. http://scienceline.ucsb.edu... 12. https://en.wikipedia.org... 13. https://www.brown.edu...