Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents

[PetraG]

aka adaptation.

Most species went extinct.

Yes, and a lot of other species were for some reason not around to leave any bones in the ground when the ones that went extinct were plentiful. That implies that new species that hadn’t existed before were coming from somewhere, right?

 

[buffalo]

My research director used to say you can model the wrinkles on an elephant’s backside,

Does this apply to the modelling that claims Adam and Eve could not have existed?

 

[buffalo]

for some reason not around to leave any bones in the ground when the ones that went extinct were plentiful.

Fossils are found in sedimentary rock. This record shows abrupt appearance, stasis and variation within. It dovetails nicely with the Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution article I posted.
In addition, we now know about cell directed mutations. SO the cell is orchestrating the organism.

 

[buffalo]

Royal Society Meeting - Modern Synthesis is Broken​

Read a report on the Royal Society Meeting

“The Modern Synthesis, while undoubtedly productive for a time, is a misconception of reality that has reached the limits of its explanatory power. The problems are fundamental. No amount of cosmetic surgery is going correct them.”

“To the contrary, Darwinian competition causes not the evolution of species but the destruction of species. It is collaboration in its various forms that causes biological evolution. Hence I’m sur prised by calls for extending the neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Synthesis. You can’t extend something that is broken. Surely what is needed now, after 65 years, is using the empirical evidence to develop a new paradigm for biological evolution.”

"If you want the definition of the Modern Synthesis, take a look at how Neil deGrasse Tyson explains evolution in the 2014 remake of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. Tyson, an astrophysicist, is unaware that he is misinformed, as are most in science, academia, government, literature, the arts, and the public by this outmoded theory of evolution."

“Shuker tried to interrupt but Noble held his ground:
‘No, YOU need to listen. I used to think exactly like you. I embraced the reductionist mindset for years. When I got out of school I was a card-carrying reductionist. Reductionism is powerful and it’s useful. I am not dissing it. Many times we need it. But it is not the whole story.’ Noble described how bacterial regulatory
networks rebuilt those genes in four days by hyper-mutating, actively searching for a solution that would give them tails and enable them to Nind food. Natural selection did not achieve that. Natural genetic engineering did.’”

“It’s appropriate that this meeting is being held at the Royal Society, whose motto, we were reminded yesterday, is “Nullius in verba”: Accept nothing on authority."

“Not one whit of empirical evidence shows that new species arise from the neo-Darwinian mechanism. To the contrary, Darwinian competition causes not the evolution of species but the destruction of species.”

 

[Allyson]

Horse-hockey.

Like I said. Horse hockey. Even when I took ID seriously as a hypothesis, I never would have said something so clearly inane. Most mutations do jack because they are neutral or take place in areas of the genome that do not code for anything anymore. Even some bad mutations provide an evolutionary advantage - like being a sickle cell carrier in Africa. Being a carrier gives you immunity to malaria. As a result, that mutation persists.

None of what you are saying makes any sense.

I also never would have said this:

I do not argue speciation does not happen. I argue it is not macro-evolution. I argue the offspring are degenerating and on their way to extinction.

Seriously?! That is so absurd on its face it does not bear an iota of serious consideration.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Finally:

Royal Society Meeting - Modern Synthesis is Broken

This meeting did not mean what you think it means. I know creationists love to make hay out of it, but they are full of it.

Extending Evolution in London? - BioLogos

biologos.org

 

[rossum]

How tight are you willing to make this definition. Does macro-evolution take us from molecules to man?

Your lack of relevant knowledge is showing, I’m afraid. Molecules to life is abiogenesis, not evolution of any kind.

Evolution of a new species is macroevolution.

I suggest that you go away and learn more about the subject; that way you will not make so many errors.

 

[Gorgias]

Also, familiarize yourself with the issues with the peer-review process and its own confirmation bias.

Whether or not the process is perfect, it nevertheless is the standard in scientific / academic research.

And, for those who cannot get their articles published through peer review processes, getting them published outside that process usually means that the views are rejected by their peers. That’s valuable knowledge to have, when asking “is this paper’s analysis reasonable or not?”

Do not judge buffalo’s posts on their merit, judge them on the fact he is an ID proponent. Nice…

To be fair, @Allyson asked how you substantiate your assertions that appear to be unfounded. @Pattylt appears to have answered “because he’s seeing them through a particular interpretative lens.” That’s a valid answer to a “how?” question…

Right, there is no proof.

Proof =/= evidence. You’re barking up the wrong tree here, by using terms loosely and not precisely.

1,2 and 3 all are based on assumptions.

“Observed”, “measured” and “measured” are assumptions? Hmm… not sure how you might substantiate that claim.

You appear not to have learned the lesson the Church learned from the Galileo fracas.

“Don’t attempt to punish scientists who claim as fact what they cannot prove?”

In matters of material facts, science always wins.

Well… it is it’s context; one might hope that it has competence in its own arena. Then again, when we try to push science to deal in theological areas (e.g., ‘ensoulment’), that’s when theology always wins.

Most species went extinct.

Mass extinction events, as well as smaller-scale localized extinction events, don’t occur due to evolution. You can’t use the outcomes of these events to prove that we’re all on the path to extinction (unless, of course, you merely mean that another asteroid is bound to hit Earth sometime in the future…).

 

[stoplooklisten]

The Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3100 BC, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. - Source: Wikipedia, History of Writing

Written human history is young, not old. Estimates of world populations in the first millennia of recorded, written history are not known and speculated to be perhaps only a few million. We don’t have the facts. There is no evidence that ancient peoples could not inter-marry and procreate. The assertion of the OP’s thread title appears to be speculation rather than confirmed fact. We don’t have the facts about the attributes of ancient populations. Sowing doubt is not helpful. I believe the Apostles Creed.

 

[Allyson]

Written human history is young, not old. Estimates of world populations in the first millennia of recorded, written history are not known and speculated to be perhaps only a few million. We don’t have the facts. There is no evidence that ancient peoples could not inter-marry and procreate. The assertion of the OP’s thread title appears to be speculation rather than confirmed fact. We don’t have the facts about the attributes of ancient populations. Sowing doubt is not helpful. I believe the Apostles Creed.

The last major bottleneck in the human species was well before recorded history at ~ 70,000 years ago. It has been estimated to have been anywhere from 1,000-12,000 individuals based on genetic sampling and comparing of modern human DNA. So, I am confused as to why you are referencing a population size estimate that is well after this time period.

Do facts only come from recorded history? Is that what you really want to say?

 

[PetraG]

The last major bottleneck in the human species was well before recorded history at ~ 70,000 years ago. It has been estimated to have been anywhere from 1,000-12,000 individuals based on genetic sampling and comparing of modern human DNA. So, I am confused as to why you are referencing a population size estimate that is well after this time period.

Do facts only come from recorded history? Is that what you really want to say?

Exactly. Genesis doesn’t say that the Adam and Eve couple could write. It says we all have a common ancestral pair to whom we can trace a common spiritual heritage. It does not say how that happens. It only says that Eve ought to be considered the mother of all the living. Adam called her that because he recognized that was her destiny. (This naming was prior to any mention that she had children.)

If all of Europe living today is related to Charlemagne in some way (which has been estimated) then it seems certain that if the human population was knocked down to 12,000 at any time in the last 70,000 years that by now we all have some ancestors in common.

 

[buffalo]

Evolution of a new species is macroevolution.

Definitions are important and I wanted you to clarify for the folks.

If your definition is that macro-evolution is lineage splitting with subsequent loss of function and eventual extinction, I am OK with that.

 

[buffalo]

Whether or not the process is perfect, it nevertheless is the standard in scientific / academic research.

Sooooo - the foundation can be built on sand?

 

[rossum]

If all of Europe living today is related to Charlemagne in some way (which has been estimated) then it seems certain that if the human population was knocked down to 12,000 at any time in the last 70,000 years that by now we all have some ancestors in common.

Going back into the past the number of your ancestors roughly double each generation: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16, 32, 64, 128 …

However, going back into the past, the human population gets smaller the further back you go.

Go far enough back and the number of your ancestors will exceed the human population at the time. By that point the then existing population was essentially made up of people with no living descendants today or people who were ancestors of every living human.

 

[buffalo]

“Observed”, “measured” and “measured” are assumptions ? Hmm… not sure how you might substantiate that claim.

Current measurements and observations do not guarantee the same was true in the past. That is the uniformatarianists view which started this whole paradigm.

 

[PetraG]

Going back into the past the number of your ancestors roughly double each generation: 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16, 32, 64, 128 …

However, going back into the past, the human population gets smaller the further back you go.

Go far enough back and the number of your ancestors will exceed the human population at the time. By that point the then existing population was essentially made up of people with no living descendants today or people who were ancestors of every living human.

Yes. Although it is technically possible to have isolated human populations such that they’re not related to each other at all, the evidence is that this isolation didn’t happen. We’re all related, and we’re all related far more recently than 2 million years ago or whatever it takes to tie us all together solely through the female line (for instance).

That’s what people do not realize about “mitochondrial Eve.” That name was poetic; it didn’t refer to the actual spiritual Eve when it was coined. You have to go back a tremendously long ways to trace us all back to each other solely through the female line. That is a huge constraint. If Adam and Eve’s son Seth were your dad, even you would not be related to Eve through the female line unless Seth married his sister. (Genesis does not say that he did.)

 

[buffalo]

John Sanford inventor of gene gun presented this paper to International Creation Conference

Adam and Eve, designed diversity, and allelefrequencies

Yet, Adam and Eve could have been created massively heterozygous. We have argued for over a decade that they could have been created with “designed diversity”. We have previously shown that a vast amount of genetic variation could have been pre-programmed into their genomes. This could logically provide the genetic basis for: 1) our human gifts and talents; 2) the many forms of human beauty; and 3) the various ways people have rapidly adapted to new habitats. It is also claimed that the currently observed human allelefrequency patterns could not arise from a single couple. The logic here is that, since there were only four sets of chromosomes in Eden, all variants would have had an initial frequency of either 25%, 50%, or 75%. Today, most allelic variants have frequencies in the range of 0–10%. Therefore, it is claimed that observed human diversity disproves a literal Adam and Eve. In this paper we have critically examined these arguments. Our analyses highlight several genetic mechanisms that can help reconcile a literal Adam and Eve with the human allele frequency distributions seen today. We use numerical simulation to show that two people, if they contain designed alleles, can in fact give rise to allele frequency distributions of the very same type as are now seen in modern man.

https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1079&context=icc_proceedings

 

[rossum]

Current measurements and observations do not guarantee the same was true in the past. That is the uniformatarianists view which started this whole paradigm.

There you are with your “proof” again, only you are saying “guarantee” instead.

Science goes with the best evidence we currently have, and the best evidence we currently have is that our current measurements, observations and estimates are correct to within the specified accuracy.

If you want to challenge those measurements, observations and estimates then you have to come up with some better measurements, observations and estimates to replace the existing ones.

Can you guarantee that every existing Hebrew-English dictionary is 100% accurate? In the absence of such a guarantee is it reasonable for me to doubt all English translations of the Bible? Do you doubt those translations yourself, even without that 100% guarantee?

 

[rossum]

Yet, Adam and Eve could have been created massively heterozygous.

Of course they could. However, that would mean that Adam and Eve were not human since they would not have had human DNA. Humans have two copies of each gene, one from their mother and one from their father. Having more than two copies (as do some plants) would give them non-human DNA and mean that they were not human, but some other Hominid species.

At some later point in time a speciation event would reduce their offspring to only two copies. You are arguing for a speciation event, for macroevolution, in the human line here, buffalo. A two-allele human would not have been able to breed with a multiple-allele ancestor.

Thank you for accepting that macroevolution can happen, buffalo.

 

[Allyson]

John Sanford inventor of gene gun

The fact that he invented something useful does not make him more reliable. If your are going to appeal to authority, make it a reliable authority. He has way too many views outside the general consensus on basic facts like the age of the earth.

I also want to second what @rossum said on heterozygosity and add that the thesis is more complex than is necessary. The naturalistic explanation we have from science is sufficient without violating Ockham’s razor. “Plurality must never be posited without necessity.” It is not necessary to posit “Adam and Eve could have been created massively heterozygous” in order to explain human genetic diversity today.

 

[buffalo]

Of course they could. However, that would mean that Adam and Eve were not human since they would not have had human DNA. Humans have two copies of each gene, one from their mother and one from their father. Having more than two copies (as do some plants) would give them non-human DNA and mean that they were not human, but some other Hominid species.

These are human definitions.