And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made He a woman.

"And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." Genesis 2:21, 22.

Basiclly, "if it says so in the bible then it is true."

 I can't answer about everyone but Orthodox religious Jews do belive in that.

Hello freeknowledge! Well, believe it or not, THE WOMAN WAS NOT CREATED FROM A RIB! The English translation isn't correct. The original text says "TSELA". True, in modern Hebrew it means rib, but the original meaning is SIDE. Do you know how in Hebrew the SIDES of a triangle or a square are called? "TSELAOT" (plural of "TSELA")! So, let's go back to the first human being created. The truth is, man and woman were created as ONE - BACK TO BACK! And the bible says so specifically in chapter 5 verses 1-2!! LOOK IT UP AND SEE! NOTICE THE LAST WORDS OF VERSE 2!!! When God put ADAM to sleep, he SEPARATED HIM INTO TWO! And then he closed the open wound n the back. I'm sure you're amazed because in kindergarden most of us are being taught it was a RIB. But that's a mistake. But wait there's more... If you read carefully you'll see that the bible calles "ADAM" (meaning "human") the man and the woman together!! Which means, that a man/woman is not complete and cannot be called ADAM until they're married!! Until then, they're called a HALF! And that's why one of the blessings in Jewish marriages is "Blessed you, thy god, king of the universe, who created the human" (="YOTSER HA-ADAM")!!! Because only a woman and a man get married they become a complete human being!! So why were they first created one and then separated, you might ask? Well the answer is so that man and woman will have a constant desire to be together and be one again!!!

No matter what the debate about the interpretation is, A religous person can't believe in part of the bible, it's a binary case - whether you choose to believe it, or not at all. 

Do Orthodox religious Jews or faithful Christians or Muslims really believe the first human female was created from a rib of a human male?

I can only speak from a Jewish perspective. Yes, some Orthodox and non-Orthodox believe that Eve was made from Adam's side (side is more accurate than rib) while others take it as more allegorical.

Many conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists certainly do. Within the Southern Baptist Convention I would feel comfortable saying that the literal interpretation is the most prevalent. Personally I see no reason to dismiss the literal reading of the text although I'm sure it could be made into an alagory somehow. The real sticking point is how "creation" fits into your theology. A young-earth, literal, creationist would certainly accept the biblical text at face value while old-earth or "less" literal creationists might seek to alagorize it in some way. Evolutionists or non-literal creationists would probably seek to reject the text as a mere fable.

Unfortunately, there are people who will believe ANYTHING if it's in a so-called sacred text. If one's religion is based on a book of revealed "truths", obviously one must accept all or none. Perhaps that's something that occurred on the "Flat Earth", wherever it may be.

Obviously there were two early ancestors who produced offspring or we wouldn't be here. Every human who has ever lived, including everyone of us on earth today descends from the same mother - "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is either the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids" - or the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours.

Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, is believed to have evolved from a 4-million-year-old upright hominid called Australopithecus anamensis.We all came out of Africa. We are not LIKE apes; we ARE apes!

www.revart.blogs.com

Polls indicate that 1 in 3 Americans take the Bible literally. If you don't believe that an omnipotent creator formed the first man out of dust and then, not wanting to break the magicians credo and perform the same trick twice, made a woman from the man's rib (or side) then there is a fifty percent chance that the next person you meet will at least claim to believe it true.

I think you'll find that regardless of whether anyone believes Eve was made from a spare-rib or not, DNA demonstrates otherwise. Mitochondrial DNA indicates that all humans on the planet share a common ancestress born around 200,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa. The Y Chromosome however indicates that all humans are descended from a common male ancestor born around 60,000 years agon in Africa. So the real Eve was around long before Adam!