Myth of evolution and new drug discovery

[grannymh]

Minimum population sizes do not depend on population growth figures, they depend on the numbers of alleles at given loci and on the number of shared alleles between us and Chimpanzees.

For example:
“The coalescence theory of populations genetics leads to the conclusion that the DRB1 polymorphism requires that the population ancestral to modern humans has maintained a mean effective size of 100,000 individuals over the 30-million-year persistence of this polymorphism. We explore the possibility of occasional population bottlenecks and conclude that the ancestral population could not have at any time consisted of fewer than several thousand individuals. The MHC polymorphisms exclude the theory claiming, on the basis of mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms, that a constriction down to one or few women occurred in Africa, at the transition from archaic to anatomically modern humans, some 200,000 years ago.”

Source: Ayala et al, Molecular genetics of speciation and human origins, PNAS 91, 6787 – 6794 (1994)
What genetics cannot tell you is how many of that population had souls. It is possible that for a time there were a mixture of souled and unsouled living in the same population.

rossum

Thank you for joining in this discussion. I eventually will have questions about the data used for the coalescence theory. In the meantime, I am reading Ayala’s early papers so that I can understand their context.

For example. In the beginning of “Molecular Genetics of Speciation and Human Origins”, Francisco Ayala refers to human evolution. Thus, the first thing I needed to know was what he considered to be human. The basic context of evolutionary theory is a form of the philosophy of materialism. This is in contrast to the Catholic teaching that humans are matter and spirit. Since I try not to assume what Ayala is thinking about human nature, I continued to read until I was sure that Ayala was not referring to a fully complete human but rather he was referring to the material aspects/physical body of a human which fossils show as being developed or changed etc. over centuries.

Toward the end of this particular paper, Ayala defines what he means by human evolution, i.e., which part of human nature. He begins the section “Theories of Human Origins” with “The origin of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, occurred around 200,000 years B.P.” He also refers to other theories regarding “the emergence of anatomically modern traits…” In other words, When Ayala refers to the evolution from H. erectus to archaic H. Sapiens, and later to anatomically modern humans, he is referring to physical aspects only and not to the fully complete human person.

In my humble opinion, according to this statement: “… the DRB1 polymorphism requires that the population ancestral to modern humans has maintained a mean effective size of 100,000 individuals over the 30-million-year persistence of this polymorphism.” actually refers to the ancestral beings and not to a fully complete modern human. It would also seem that the length of the persistence is more a transition to a final human being than the modern human being itself.

What I see happening, is that genetics can suggest a time frame for the general development or evolution of the modern human’s physical or material body. However, the context or nature of this research is non-informative regarding the point of origin of the fully complete human being. Thus the possibility of two sole parents of the human species does exist.

I realize that I also have to demonstrate that the real human person is more than anatomy. I have started to address that in the thread “Is there any difference between a chimpanzee and a human?” in Apologetics.

Blessings,
granny

All creation is a joy to behold.

 

[grannymh]

What genetics cannot tell you is how many of that population had souls. It is possible that for a time there were a mixture of souled and unsouled living in the same population.

rossum

The idea of a mixture of souled and unsouled beings living in the same population has been around for a long time. However, since “soul” makes the human species different in kind from unsouled species, it would be extremely doubtful that there would be fruitful breeding between the two.

 

[rossum]

The idea of a mixture of souled and unsouled beings living in the same population has been around for a long time. However, since “soul” makes the human species different in kind from unsouled species, it would be extremely doubtful that there would be fruitful breeding between the two.

I am Buddhist so I am not the person to ask here. In Buddhism nothing has a soul, neither animals nor humans.

rossum

 

[grannymh]

I am Buddhist so I am not the person to ask here. In Buddhism nothing has a soul, neither animals nor humans.

rossum

You are a remarkable Buddhist. You and Alec have taught me a lot in addition to patiently explaining science. Because I believe in the unity of creation, it is important for me to understand worldviews other than my own.

At the end of his essay “The Powers That Be: Mechanisms That Prevent Us Recognising Animal Sentience” Andrew Linzey quotes Henry Beston describing animals as “they are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” from The Outermost House, A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. This reminded me that regardless of disagreements between worldviews, all humans are in the same net of life and time.

Blessings,
granny

All human beings are worthy of profound respect.

 

[StAnastasia]

In other words, do the computer-simulated populations used for exploring the minimum bottleneck size based on valid genetic evidence also keep track of the individual movements of 10,000 Homo sapiens who may or may not be fully complete humans? How does the computer determine that everyone of the 10,000 bottleneck is incapable of wandering off?..Unless there is actual evidence showing that no one could wander off at anytime from all the various populations of hominids, then the possibility of two sole parents of the human species does exist.
Blessings,granny

Granny, whether people wandered off is irrelevant. What is relevant is what the human genome tells us. If there were indeed only two human parents, this would have to be reflected in a very constricted number of alleles in the human genome. This restriction of variation does not exist; therefore we cannot have had only two ancestral parents.

The only possibilty for you, it seems to me, is to conclude that God has tricked us: God created two human parents, but made it appear as if “Adam” and “Eve” were heirs to an ancestral breeding population that never fell below a few thousand breeding pairs.

Whether such genetic trickery is worthy of the divine character I leave up to you.

StAnastasia