One of the first questions any perceptive child who encounters the story of Cain and Abel for the first time will ask is, "Whom did Cain marry?" The standard response - that he married his sister - is one which not uncommonly is followed by the second question, "Why was incest right then and wrong now?" Any perceptive child will quickly realise that the usual answer, "Because things were different then" is less an answer and more an evasion.
Ad hoc responses such as these fly in the face of the usual fundamentalist insistence that God's moral compass remains invariant. This was brought home to me yesterday when I was looking at Leviticus 18, almost all of which is related to sexual morality, and of that component, by far most is concerned with incestuous relationships:
Ad hoc responses such as these fly in the face of the usual fundamentalist insistence that God's moral compass remains invariant. This was brought home to me yesterday when I was looking at Leviticus 18, almost all of which is related to sexual morality, and of that component, by far most is concerned with incestuous relationships:
None of you shall approach anyone near of kin to uncover nakedness: I am the LORD. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is the nakedness of your father. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether born at home or born abroad. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, begotten by your father, since she is your sister. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s flesh. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s flesh. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law: she is your son’s wife; you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, and you shall not take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are your flesh; it is depravity. And you shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.
A few chapters, Lev 20 further underlines the utter abhorrence with which incest was regarded. Deuteronomy also reiterates this prohibition against incest in 27:20, 22-23:
Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has violated his father’s rights. All the people shall say, “Amen!” Cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother. All the people shall say, “Amen!” Cursed be anyone who lies with his mother-in-law. All the people shall say, “Amen!”
Given that Leviticus 18 states that
continuance in the land was contingent on avoiding these practices, it
impossible to credibly argue (assuming the monogenistic worldview of the special creationist) that God's moral laws did not apply to the first humans, but were suddenly imposed at an arbitrary point when the human population reached a certain size.
Crossing into the New Testament, Paul's denunciation of an incestuous relationship among one of the Corinthian believers serves to show that these relationships were not viewed with approval either in the OT or the NT.
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. (1 Cor 5:1)
God's moral compass (to use the term employed by a particularly vehement anti-evolutionist) would appear to remain unchanged on this point. That special creationists will resort to special pleading in order to declare a putative incestuous relationship between Cain and a hypothetical sister (ditto for Seth) morally acceptable shows unfortunately just how strong both their adherence to human dogma, and their rejection of evolution is.
