Raccoons exist.

Alleged bible people are fictional animals like Klingons and Ferengi.

 Duke University is guilty of pseudo-research fronting for bible propaganda.  

You are religiously speaking NOT GENETICALLY SPEAKING....typing actually here.

Do you plan upon living thousands of years ???

To follow urban versus rural raccoons is a long term study of dubious merit.

You might consider observing your self, poly dactyl cats. My 2 polys, Evo and Laila have 6 thumbs and use them with claws retracted.

Picking up food rather than piercing food with claws may be observed as a beneficial mutation that leads to increased survival rates despite human "breeders" sterilizing or murdering kittens with this common mutation....

Evolution applies to genetics NOT RELIGION

THE invention of language includes the tribal shaman invention of alleged gawds to threaten listeners with unseen enforcers of shaman stories/predictions/threats

@GreenAtheist - I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I wasn't talking about anything related to any religion whatsoever. I was talking about real, scholarly research that is ongoing. My point was that you'll no sooner find the first pair of urbanized raccoons than you will Adam & Eve, because neither existed.

Take a look at dogs, which evolved from wolves & have only been domesticated for about 10,000 to 15,000 years. When man developed fire, a few courageous wolves who were less afraid of humans moved closer to their campsites. They got tired of freezing their bippies off out in the wilderness & found they could feed on scraps from the hunt.

Eventually these wolves & humans formed a symbiotic relationship. They found they could hunt more effectively together. The wolves, who have a more sensitive sensory system, provided an alarm that helped keep the tribe safe. The wolves provided companionship on lonely nights without television. Viola--man's best friend.

Look how many species of dogs have evolved to fulfill various functions in this brief time, but this evolution doesn't prove dogs came from one set of parents

@davyjones brevity works....verbiage fails with xians

"& they tend to not breed with rural raccoons. "

Something in common with some urban humans I guess.

@Remiforce Technically speaking, dogs as we know them today did NOT actually evolve into the various kinds there are, they were actually 'forced' to breed into those kinds and shapes by the owners/breeders using a kind of selective breeding and NOT the real processes of evolution.
For example, the squashed in noses of bulldogs, pugs, etc, is NOT a natural occurrence and actually is harmful and restricts the dogs breathing, German Shepherds, etc, have inherent diseases such as Hip Displasia thanks to human meddling, British Bulldogs ( the so-called pure breds) are unable to mate without human assistance/intervention since the 'adaptations' forced onto the breed over centuries has made it virtually impossible for the female to bear the excess weight of the mounted male during copulation, similar goes for sheep, cats, cattle, horses, birds, etc, the list is almost endless as to the species humans have meddled with and in thus causing often disastrous adaptions purely for aesthetic reasons.

@rsabbatini. Sad...how they believe such nonsense.

Physical deformations rather than sterility would have been the biggest outcome by far with all the in-breeding needed to make a population from 2 only original parents, especially considering that by " creating Eve from the bone taken from Adam then Eve WOULD have a Steve rather than an Eve in the first since, even with modern cloning techniques, it is almost impossible to create a female clone using cloning tissue taken from a male donor.

@Triphid inbreeding in and of itself doesn’t cause deformities. That’s only true if there’s a dual defective gene. Normally defective genes we inherit from one parent are “fixed” by the genes of the other. Doubling up on the defective gene is what would cause any non standard protein formation. Assuming no identically defective genes were present in Adam and Eve there would be no deformities is subsequent inbreeding.

@JacobMeyers Sir, I don't know where you get or got your medical information from BUT after v3 years of training to be a Nurse ( which involved very intensive studying of human anatomy, genetics, etc, etc,) plus 7 years more as fully qualified Nurse working in Hospitals I can tell you that inbreeding between very close genetic relatives DOES often cause physical deformities in the offspring of such unions as well as spontaneous miscarriages/abortions.

@Triphid I think modern science is slowly getting there without having to clone.
[guardianlv.com]

@Triphid Cool, Ill use proper jargon in that case. We are actually in agreement somewhat. When closely related individuals have offspring there is an increased chance for congenital disorders. I was simply stating the mechanism for those deleterious effects is not the inbreeding itself but rather the doubling up on defective alleles. There's no credible evidence suggesting that closely related pairings cause any genetic damage. Rather it only increases the chance for unwanted homozygotes to propagate. This of course can happen with or without inbreeding so definitively it is not caused by inbreeding. This is a case of correlation does not equal causation.

Since the op was talking about a myth I thought it ok to mention that if adam and eve had perfect genes their offspring wouldn't necessarily develop birth defects.

@JacobMeyers Technically both the biblically mythological Adam and Eve would have had EXACTLY the same genes and genetic make-up since, according to the myth, Eve WAS created from tissue material TAKEN from Adam, ergo that same tissue would have been carrying Testosterone in large amounts thus making him a male and very minute amounts of estrogen, not enough to alter the resultant 'person' from masculine to feminine.
Human embryos, in the early stages of gestation are non-gender specific UNTIL, at a certain stage of gestation, either a 'rush' of testosterone or estrogen occurs then the gender is actually determined though there are cases where the developing embryo receives equal doses of both sex hormones at the same time in gestation and then a condition known as Hermaphroditism ( taken from the 2 ancient Greek names of Hermes and Aphrodite ) results in a body with traits of both genders, i.e. a penis like a male and later, during puberty, breasts develop that are distinctly female and NOT merely 'man boobs' so to speak.
THAT is but ONE those malformations/ deformations of which I mentioned earlier.

We came down from the trees and walked about 1 to 1.7 million yrs ago. Lucy is our ancestor. The tree has more sapiens then thought. So the evolution of man is still not precisely known. Peace and Darwin

@DougReed Lucy is the oldest ancestor we know of, but there were many before her. The Adam & Eve story is a fairy tale

Oh, Remi, genetically we had a bad start. My list currently starts with excessive (even toxic) amounts of testosterone in a few men, resulting in all-but perpetual war.

@yvilletom 98% of our DNA is said to come from chimpanzees, who can be nasty little apes given to fighting. Bonobos believe in making love, not war, but we don't seem to have much genetic connection with them.

@Remiforce bonobos are slightly smarter than the other chimpanzees. Sex, bananas and bongo beats.

@DougReed I understand 60% of our human DNA comes from bananas. Those chimps must have eaten a lot of bananas in evolutionary times

I am doing this for my friends well being, this religion has had negative effects on them ( such as believing marital rape to be ok, and being fine with it happening to her eventually wich is horrible) I want to have some evidence to back up my claims of the religion to be false.

@Ry-Studios Do they live in a US state (i.e., California) or elsewhere that has made marital rape illegal?

@yvilletom Yes, but none of them are married, or even been in a realtionship ( friendship or otherwise) with anyone outside of the religous school and church.

That's a great one!

I brought that up and all my friends said, " the Bible just didn't say when they had girl kids, they just did"

@Ry-Studios That’s convenient. I thought maybe they got eaten by dinosaurs 6,000 years ago.

@Ry-Studios It also says that after Cain slew Able, he went to the land of Nod where he took a wife. So that implies that there were other people on Earth beside Adam, Eve, Able, Cain. Where the hell did she come from?

@dahermit The sons and daughters of Lilith and Samael the demon. Lilith (Adam's first wife) didn't care for being subservient to Adam so "God" made her into a demon and she started up with Samael and had kids. They had to go somewhere and apparently Cain found them. That or it's all BS.

I tend to lean towards the "BS" argument.

my friends all believe it ( the Bible and every single one of its stories) and I want to show them why there is no reason to. I tried bringing it up to them that all creatures would be horrifically inbred causing lots of medical problems due to not enough genetic diversity, but all they said was " well you've got to remember we worship an all-powerful God"!!! I couldn't even say anything after hearing that, its such a lame excuse...

@Ry-Studios I've spent a lot of time debating with religious people and it is always in vain. You can't argue with rationale, logic, and reason against a person who's position is based on absurd ideas, dogma, and blind faith. Regardless of the piles, and piles, and piles, of evidence you confront them with they will never accept it. All facts and evidence will be dismissed.

Below is a good article you might like to read.

[independent.co.uk]

@Gawd I would still like to at least try, one of my friends seems to agree with me that if you make a claim you should have proof of such claim, its a start, I'm actually pretty sure that she could be convinced, after all, we grew up together in the same environment, and I could change my mind, she even has some secular views very uncommon in our school, such as gays not being sinful.

@Ry-Studios Sounds like you have a fighting chance!

my friends all believe it ( the Bible and every single one of its stories) and I want to show them why there is no reason to. I tried bringing it up to them that all creatures would be horrifically inbred causing lots of medical problems due to not enough genetic diversity, but all they said was " well you've got to remember we worship an all-powerful God"!!! I couldn't even say anything after hearing that, its such a lame excuse... They are such avid worshipers that one of my friends even believes that rape isn't rape as long as you are married, I am worried for they're well being she is going to let horrible stuff happen to herself.

@Ry-Studios Wow. You have some strange friends

Excellent article!

I have come across many people who believe that is how a skeletal body is identified.
There are grown-ass, supposedly educated people who believe that a man has one less rib than a woman.
because of a stupid fairy tale.