Quote:
Originally Posted by Heavenese
So what do you guys have to say on some of the concepts mentioned here? Particularly about the part concerning the diversity of the mitochondrial DNA in the wives of Noah's sons, and how that would explain why what science calls "mitochondrial Eve" as being older than "Y chromosomal Adam".
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First, regarding mtDNA being more diverse than YDNA is probably due to many things - one having to do with warfare and the taking of woman - the gene pool of male DNA being lower than the females that were available for breeding when peoples were conquered particularly early on when one male might have many females - the opposite has not been true for all of man's history - as well as the migration of females by capture.
As to the rest of the video there are so many problems. I will briefly touch on them.
1) Bible claims the history of the Universe and world (in ref. to Gen.1-11). Not really - it mostly focuses on the middle East and a particular family. It really has very little to say about these earlier people before Abraham. Second, Gen.1:1-3 does not speak of a Universe from nothing. I've commented on this elsewhere very recently.
2) Unknown reasons for the bottleneck that reduced the African population to 1,000-10,000 people. Not true, there are many reasons for this that have been proposed even if they are not completely understood. Invoking the flood myth, with all of its problems of 8 people, does not counter this with any more sufficiency.
3) No Fossil record for mankind during the million years prior to this bottleneck. He says first there is absolutely none then says it is
'a scattering' and that there should be more fossil evidence. Well is there or is there not evidence and why should you demand that there be a certain number of evidential fossils? Furthermore, the fossil record, during this million years and prior, consists of much more than human fossils which contradict the whole creation story of 6-10,000 years ago.
4) In both the models he showed on the screen the problem he brings up (#3) seems to have gone right over his head for his own model. If the population of the pre-flood world was 100-500,000 people before the bottleneck of 8 people should we not also have fossils for these individuals who spread out over the earth? The
supposed problem he brings up applies to both models. DUH!
He wants us to believe that a population of
8 is more convincing, genetically, than a population of 1,000-10,000 and that all life emerged from a boat on Mt.Ararat and mankind spoke 70 different languages appox. 400 yrs later because God specially created those language.
5) The Creation of man in Gen is about Genetics. Now that's a grand eisegetical move. Forget about all the other ANE myths that say similar things about god/s creating man out of clay/earth.
6) He then says that Eve was a clone or a unique creation having the same chromosomes as Adam or having 2 unique ones. Either way he says it reduces her alleles to 2 or 4 for each pair of chromosomes. He does this by way of God taking Adam's rib to make Eve. The genetic clarity of this revelation is so grand - not. He does this to get to the bottleneck of having low diversity staring at the flood. OK! We agree on the low diversity before the population expansion.
The problem is that he said that he agreed with the scientific data regarding a small population pool as the reason for the low genetic diversity among the world human population. Yet that same data does not line-up with the time frame of the flood 4,500 years ago. You can't have the same rate of mutation for the
agreed upon diversity. The mutation rate for the flood scenario would have to be much faster for mtDNA. He says he is going to talk about this later - but does not.
7) The whole Earth was populated. He say this is profound. No, it is a very general and ambiguous statement It is also an anachronistic reading if he is suggesting that the writer thought this to be what we think of as the whole earth today. It details the population of Noah's son's sons. It was approximately 70 people who populated what they thought was the whole earth at that time around the Mid East and Mediterranean. To try and fit subsequent history of the people of the earth into this general statement is once again eisegetical. He says this is also a profound genetic statement regarding the 8 people who populated the whole earth.
8) 8 People populating the earth. He is ambiguous by saying you can take the mtDNA and YDNA and go back to a
single ancestral male and female.This is somewhat not clear, in light of his purpose, because evolutionists mean that the single person was part of a
smaller population and not the only pair of humans on earth or a group of 4 pair.
An interesting note is that he takes genetics to show that the Bible was somehow giving us true genetic information. But if genetics is true and the Bible mentions 4 men and 4 woman on the ark what would you expect to find if you asked the question -
'what is the genetic picture of this group.?' He thinks the answer is profound that the Bible got it right.
There was 1 YDNA and there were possibly 4 mtDNA that populated the earth. Well if genetics is you baseline for answering the question and some verse gives the number of people and their gender you can't but arrive at the right answer.
To act as if those who wrote the Bible could not discern simple facts like language and language change or population dispersions from
small tribal groups (which obviously would reflect the true fact of genetics and history) is ridiculous. This guy acts as if the details, of the Bible, are now revealed by genetics and the Bible's meaning is just that - he overlays genetic facts onto a
very general description of human migration history and facts that were obvious to anyone paying attention. Whoopi Doo!
The Evolutionary Model works just fine. He does not deal with tearing it down he just deals with trying to overlay it onto the general descriptions of these few verses found in Gen.1-11 with slight modifications of mutation rates -
which he never got to - in order to have an earlier starting point for the growth in population (4,500 years ago).
His two main points are small beginning populations and low genetic diversity. The first would have been completely obvious to the Bibilical population. The second is what he overlays onto the text and why the Bible says nothing of it even though he thinks it does. A low starting population (the thing being obvious in Bible times) would by necessity have low genetic variation today (the thing not so obvious in Bible times). He then takes this information (something Science gave us not the Bible) and acts as if the Bible was telling us something profound.
The low population is either 8 or 1,000-10,000. Both would require the low genetic diversity we see today. But ask yourself which is more probable and ANE myth beginning 4,500 years ago or the Science that he is using yet, at the same time, rejecting.
Another point: The Babel explanation is obviously a post-hoc rationalization for the diversity of languages obvious to everyone at the time yet only 400 years from the 8 people that stepped off the ark speaking one language.
How do you go from 1 language 4,500 years ago or 70 in 4,000 years to almost 7,000? Magic of Course! Just look at English in the Americas in the last 400 years (Still English with dialects of course) and this is 1/10 the time frame given for all these languages according to the Bible. Right!
I'll stick with Science.
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