Although he’s one of the most infamous characters in fiction, Cain is still a relatively obscure figure. The Bible seems to make him out as a whiner, jealous and petty, so unworthy of any love that he’s blamed for making crops so damn hard to grow. Once he’s given the infamous “mark” for having committed the first murder, he’s told that he will become a nomad, and like any bad-boy, he does exactly the opposite and settles down in the land of Nod (which is about as real a place as that sounds).

The story doesn’t technically end there, depending on who you ask. There are tons of stories outside the bible that attempt to describe Cain and Abel’s relationship in more detail. This kind of material is called pseudepigrapha, texts which are regarded as false or unverifiable works. It’s basically the first century equivalent of fan-fiction. One of these books is called The Book of Jubilees, sometimes referred to as “Lesser Genesis”. It further elaborates on the sexual relationships between Cain and his sister Awan, and between Seth and his sister Azura. It sounds as enjoyable to read as the many erotic adventures of Kirk and Spock

The story of Cain doesn’t end there. Mormons believe that he made a secret pact with the devil to kill Abel. In the Book of Moses, they form a secret alliance, which helps explain why Genesis specifically mentions Cain’s son Lamech murdering one of his enemies (I just think the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree).

Regardless of which particular fairy tale you subscribe to (if you tend to favor this nonsense), Cain’s limited choice of mating partners isn’t a subject most people are comfortable talking about. Incest has largely fallen out of favor, and defending this particular aspect of the dogma is a thankless job. Luckily, Answers in Genesis is always happy to fight the good fight, and they aren’t afraid to try and inject some science in there!

Now it is true that children produced in a union between brother and sister have a greater chance to be deformed. As a matter of fact, the closer the couple are in relationship, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed. It is very easy to understand this without going into all the technical details.

Yeah, it’s a good thing they try to avoid the “technical details”, since a gene pool consisting of only two organisms is on the fast track to Extinction-Ville (with a stop-over at Mongoloid-Bay). Don’t let that bother you too much though, since you can always claim some magical mumbo-jumbo helped.

Speaking of mumbo-jumbo, you might like they way they try and explain how these first humans survived the first onslaught of genetic catastrophe: It’s all about sin, you see:

When the first two people were created, they were perfect. Everything God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). That means their genes were perfect—no mistakes. But when sin entered the world because of Adam (Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over a long period of time, this degeneration would have resulted in all sorts of mistakes occurring in the genetic material of living things.

By long they mean around 2,500 years (or about 125 generations), a tiny blip in evolutionary time for such a complex species. Still, you have to admire their attempt to try and maintain their idiotic beliefs in the light of modern genetic evidence. They are sticking with their incest guns, and they are proud of it. “Hell yes, Cain fucked his sister! Didn’t you know that was the thing to do at the time?”

As for all this business about sin being a mechanism of evolutionary pressure, it sounds like a testable theory to me. Under this model of genetic, the more you sin, the crappier your genes. Hey, I wonder what kind of fucked up experimental conditions you would need to test this moronic idea out. I’m laughing just thinking about ’em.