A common objection to the Genesis account of creation is that, since God initially created only two people, their children would have to have married each other in order to continue humanity. That's incest! Gross, right? This common objection is effective on modern minds, but when the emotional element is taken away, it loses all of its power.
I want you to imagine for a moment that instead of creating two people, God created four. Adam and Eve, and Alan and Evelyn. Adam and Eve bear Cain. Alan and Evelyn bear Kate. Cain marries Kate, and they bear a child. Who does this child marry? You see, then, that mathematically speaking, adding more people merely delays the inevitability of incest. This, in itself, renders the alleged "problem" of incest, as it is often presented against the Genesis account of origins, completely toothless.
Put simply, even in the modern day, we are marrying our relatives. As much as this makes some people cringe, it is a fact of biology. If you're not marrying a relative, you're not marrying a human. But the irony of this objection is that it comes from people who believe that even if you marry a non-human, you are still marrying a relative.
In Christianity, all creatures were created according to their kinds. It is not even remotely possible for two separate kinds of creatures to reproduce. This plays out in both nature and in zoos. If you breed a lion and a tiger, you get a liger. If you breed a zebra and a donkey, you get a zonkey. If you breed a man and a monkey, you get arrested. Humans can only breed with one kind of animal: Humans.
This is because we simply weren't made to breed with anything else. Each animal was created according to its kind, and variation is possible within kinds. But in Evolution, all living things are descended from a single common ancestor. We're not talking about all people being descended from two people here, but all living things being descended from one single, self-created (you know, magic) cell. If people think it's gross that Cain would have had to marry his sister, how can they justify a belief that means Cain could have married a porcupine and it would still be incest?
There is a common phrase, "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". The idea behind this phrase is that if you have a problem, you shouldn't call someone else out for having the same problem, because that will backfire, as it has in this case. The fact is, Evolutionists not only have a bigger incest problem than Christianity, but they have no solution, whereas Christianity does.
See, it all comes down to basic genetics. I assume most of my readers know how genes are passed down from generation to generation. We all carry two sets of genes: One from our mother, one from our father. If we have children, we will pass one set of those genes to them, the other of which will be given by their mother (or, if you're a woman, their father). The problem we have in our fallen world is that genes mutate, and sometimes, we pass down those mutations.
Sometimes, that isn't such a bad thing. I, for example, have blue eyes. This, while it is a mutation, is not especially damaging. The absolute worst thing that can happen to me because I have blue eyes is a potential wife will not find me attractive, and that's hardly going to kill me or stop me finding another wife who is indifferent/attracted to blue eyes. But of course, mutations do cause other things that do affect life. Diseases and deformities are also likely to result from mutation (which is another serious problem for Evolution: It's far too rare for a mutation to be beneficial for Evolution to actually happen).
One of these diseases is sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease that causes red blood cells to develop incorrectly. If both parents have the gene, there is a 1 in 4 chance that the offspring will be born with the disease. If not? The chances are obviously smaller. However, the issue with siblings is that, since they are more likely to inherit the same mutations from their parents, they are more likely to pass on those mutated genes.
But as you go back in time, there were less and less mutations. In fact, Adam and Eve were genetically perfect. They had no mutations to pass down to their children, which means their children probably wouldn't have many to pass down to their children either. Sadly, each generation, new mutations would be created, and by the time of Moses, this was sufficient to cause God to forbid close marriages. But prior to this, it was not necessary, and indeed was not feasible.
So, both Christianity and Evolution, or indeed any origins theory, have incest problems. Christianity easily solves its relatively small incest problem by pointing out that when God created life, there were no genetic mutations in any living thing, including the first two people, meaning inbreeding could not have caused the same problems it causes today. Evolution has no such answer. Indeed, in the Evolutionist narrative, a mutation isn't even an error, but a change. There is no such thing as a "perfect" genome, because there is no standard to go by. Humans weren't meant to be humans, they just happened to become humans. It's the same with the aforementioned porcupines, cats, horses etc. Everything that exists is the result of blind, pitiless indifference. Life was an accident, as were the forms it takes. Things just are. Therefore, perfect genomes aren't on the table. But they're the only things that could be on the table. Take them away, you cannot solve the incest problem. Glass house, meet stone. In fact, meet meteorite.
But we must ask, if God is so perfect, why didn't the human genome stay perfect? The answer to that is sin. Adam and Eve were initially physically perfect, but morally, they failed. God gave them a simple command, with a warning that if they broke it, they would die. They broke it, and so indeed they did die, as do all their descendants. This is far from ideal. God loves the ones He created in His image, and so while He was forced to curse the world for sin, He Himself bore that curse, earning redemption for us. As His word says, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21).
In other words, when Jesus died on the cross, He received the full penalty for sin on our behalf. Even the thorns! Because of this, we can now receive forgiveness for our sin by merely confessing Him as Lord, and believing He rose from the dead.
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A related comment from Millennial Atheists
Around the time the porcupine post was uploaded, this ministry (at the time, God Squad Apologetics) got noticed by a page called "Millennial Atheists". They shared several of our posts, usually with cliched atheist responses as a caption. I'd decided not to give them the time of day, since they weren't actually saying anything worth bothering with, and beyond the shares, weren't really engaging with the page. However, they did share the porcupine post, along with the following caption: "Evolution is true. And we are very distantly related to porcupines. And incest is sex between close relatives. Like your sibling, parent or first cousin. So how the hell can you consider humans and porcupines to be incest?"
Since this was not only the first time I have seen something intelligent from this particular page, but also the first intelligent response to this particular argument (well, other than "good point"), I decided to give them one free response.
Now, the first thing I will say is that although God Squad Apologetics generally operated by sharing memes, the memes themselves were really just "book covers", just as they are here. It was very rare for me to share a meme without some accompanying text that went into more detail. And indeed, sometimes, if you read the meme without the accompanying text, you entirely missed the point. Why do I say this? Because although Millennial Atheists' caption responds to the meme, it shows no evidence that they have read the accompanying text. The result? The atheist has, indeed, missed the point of the post.
The first thing they say is "Evolution is true. And we are very distantly related to porcupines." I'm going to pull a Hitchens here and gloss over it by saying "that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." That's not to say I don't have evidence against Evolution, as it is a very silly religion I am ashamed to have ever been involved in, but since Millennial Atheists, at least thus far, appears to be your typical "we right, you dumb, neh neh neh neh neh" kind of atheist page, I felt the need to use a semi-competent atheist to hopefully persuade them to start thinking about what they actually believe, rather than just claiming it's true.
The second thing they do is define incest. Though this suggests they have missed the point of the post, it's a good place to start. What exactly is incest? Let's pose a hypothetical scenario for you. Two 18 year olds get married, and set off on their honeymoon. They decide to go abroad, but sadly, never make it. The plane crashes, into the sea, killing everyone on board except these newlyweds, who barely manage to make it to a nearby island. It's cut off from civilisation, so they settle down, and just begin their lives anew. They have several sons and daughters, who intermarry with each other and produce the next generation. This continues for 6,000 years until finally, two descendants from opposite ends of that particular family tree also settle down and have kids. Is this incest? If you say yes, you've answered your own question: It's incest no matter how distant the relation is. All that matters is you came from the same common ancestor. If you say no, then first of all, at what point does it cease to be incest? But second of all, all you've really done is alter the language we're using. You haven't even slightly begun to answer the main point.
See, although atheists tend to dismiss truths they find undesirable, the objection to the single origin of the human race, at least in its most sophisticated form, has never been as simple as "eww, Cain married his sister? Gross." Rather, the objection is that close relatives produce deformed offspring, and so if we are truly the descendants of just two people (which genetic evidence forces even Evolutionists to admit, look up "Y Chromosome Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve"), then we, also, should be quite horribly deformed by this point. The point I was making in the original post isn't that humans sleeping with porcupines would be incest, but that by expanding the number of descendents from a common ancestor, you expand the problem it causes. If it is a problem for all people to be descended from a common ancestor, it is a much bigger problem for all living organisms to be descended from a common ancestor. The difference is, Christians have an answer for our smaller version of the problem (see above). Evolutionists have no answer for their significantly bigger version.
As for how I can consider humans sleeping with porcupines to be incest, the simple answer is I don't. Humans are not related to porcupines, directly or otherwise. Rather, what we see in reality is exactly what we see in Genesis: Organisms reproduce according to their kinds. Humans, and only humans, produce humans. Porcupines, and only porcupines, produce porcupines. There has never been any evidence to the contrary. Therefore, human-animal relationships are not incest, but bestiality.
This is actually further evidence against Evolution. There are reproductive gaps that cannot be filled. Breed a lion and a tiger, you get a liger. Breed a zebra and a donkey, you get a zonkey. Breed a European man and an African woman, you get another human. But breed any human with a monkey, all you get is arrested. Organisms are reproductively locked into their kinds, and they show up in the fossil record with these same distinctions. It's actually rather awkward how Evolutionists don't understand this basic fact of biology.
This was ultimately my only response to Millennial Atheists (though I challenged them to say something intelligent enough to make me change my mind), but I am quite grateful to them for their originality. It's not especially common for me to get a response that is both new and intelligent, so I take my bandana off to them. As a reward, I shall share the Gospel: Millennial Atheists (and the rest of my audience), you are far more than just a cosmic milk spillage. You are not the descendent of a magical microbe, but of two people who were created in the image of God, that they may glorify Him, and have a close, personal relationship with Him. Sadly, they rebelled against Him, meriting death as a punishment. This is a tradition we continue to this day. Yet, out of His love for us, God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and so He sent His Son to take on the form of a man, and die on a cross. This allows us to essentially "swap verdicts". Jesus, though innocent, died as a sinner. Therefore, though we are guilty, we can be declared "righteous" through faith. If you confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you too will be raised to eternal life.