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buffalo
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Assumptions based on assumptions.
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StAnastasia
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Moses is irrelevant to the discussion of genetics, as he didn’t know anything about it. If you accept that genetic science is able to tell us anything about the human genome, you implicitly accept what genetics has to say about human genetic history.
You can’t have it both ways, accepting the authority of genetic testing for diseases and paternity, but rejecting what genetics has to say about human evolutionary history.
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StAnastasia
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No based on the facts of genetics.
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buffalo
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Ready to examine this?
Assumption 1 - genetic differences are soley due to mutations.
Assumption 2 - Adam and Eve were genetically the same
Assumption 3 - common ancestry
Assumption 4 - mutation rate
Now I can agree that perhaps after a few generations after Adam and Eve the population was around 10,000.
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Ahimsa
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I think I see what you’re saying. You’re defining species as a group of interbreeding organisms – so, by definition, a “species” always includes more than one individual, possibly tens, hundreds, or millions of individuals. And you can then make the claim that Homo sapiens never existed as one individual, but always existed as a popluation. This definition is useful when you’re dealing with living organisms, because you can determine if living organisms interbreed with some other living organisms. But when you’re dealing with fossil material, or with DNA, then another definition of species, or several other definitions of species, are more useful. I’m using a DNA-based definition, or morphological based, definition of species – which does allow for a single, or first, appearance of a particular species, and which is useful in the context of extinct, or deceased, organisms.
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Lui
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Speaking of assumptions, do you believe that Jonah who lived in a giant fish(or whale) actually existed and that this story is true? I just wonder where you draw the line. Do you believe ALL stories of the Bible are literally true and try to present evidence of the ones you do.
The reason I ask is because I would like to know if there are some stories that even you consider as too far-fetched to be taken literally and rather consider as symbolic stories.
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StAnastasia
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buffalo, can we expect you to present this theory about the literalness of “Adam and Eve” to the American Society of Genetics any time soon? If you promise to write your proposal, I’ll submit my proposal to the American Geophysical Union for a paper arguing that the Moon is in fact made of green cheese!
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buffalo
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The verse:
1 Now the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonas: *and Jonas was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
The Commentary:
Notes & Commentary:
**Ver. 1. ***Fish. *Hebrew *dag: *afterwards daga occurs, ver. 2; (Haydock) on which Leusden observes, the Jews infer that Jonas was first swallowed up by male and then by a female fish, which being full of young he was much straitened, and prayed from the belly of that (hadaga) female fish! He alludes to Rabbi Jarchi. (Haydock) — Thus *nar, *puer, is put for a girl, to imply that Rebecca was prudent and Dina rambling. (Buxt. Tib. 13.) See Kennicott, Dis. 2., p. 417 and 552. — Noble discoveries! Many suppose (Haydock) that this fish was a whale, as it does not live on flesh; (Calmet) but its throat being so narrow, as hardly to suffer a man’s arm to pass, it is more probable that it was the sea-dog, lamia or *canis chariarias, *(Bartolin 14.) which may easily contain a man. (Aldrovandus iii. 32.) (Menochius) — This sea-dog, or shark, has five rows of teeth in each jaw. Human bodies have been found entire in the stomach. (Button.) — Our Saviour calls the fish a whale, Matthew xii. 40. (Worthington) — But that term is given to any great sea monster. Yet it is not of much importance what species of fish be meant, provided the miracle be admitted. (Calmet) — The pagans ridiculed it. (St. Augustine, ep. 102. q. 6. 30.) — Yet they believed many of a similar nature, alleging the omnipotence of God. (St… Jerome) — This reason accounts for all the miracles recorded in Scripture. But might not God have chosen some easier expedient? We must not dive into his reasons. The impression which such a fact would make on the Ninivites, and the prefiguring of Christ’s burial, might suffice. Jonas was not a type of his death, as some have imagined, Q. ad Orthodox. (Calmet) — *Nights, *or as long as our Saviour was in the monument, (Menochius) which was about thirty-four hours. (Calmet, Dis.)
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Lui
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I assume that means you think this is a historical story.
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SGWessells
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No, my argument is that if someone is going to take the “man is made in the image of God” statement literally, I see no reason why that person can dismiss the “dust of the ground” statement, since it occurs in the same passage and therefore presumably has the same authority.SGW
**Because you have a preconceived notion of what you want the Bible to say, which is what determines which verses you take literally and which you don’t. But that is begging the question (i.e. assuming what you want to prove), which is a logical fallacy. **
Certainly not all verses of the Bible are to be taken literally. Is that your argument?
Do you think Christians are obliged to take the “days” of creation as 24 hour days?
For the record, since the overwhelming majority of the instances where the word “yom” for day in Genesis means a literal 24 hour day in the hundreds of other occurrences in the OT, and since it is accompanied by evening and morning, which makes the “day = age” theory ridiculous, and since Exodus 20:11 asserts an exact equivalence between the days of the week and the days of creation in the commandment to honor the sabbath day, and since there is no reason to interpret the passage metaphorically except that modern science makes it absurd to do so, and since the rest of the Bible gives no reason to believe the passage was intended to be unhistorical, I believe the writer of Gen. 1 intended to present the creation account there as literal history.
Needless to say, i do not accept them as such, but I think the original writer meant them that way. None of the alternative interpretations seem to fit the text and context near so well. Of course, others are free to interpret them as they will, which makes the Bible useless as a revelation.
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SGWessells
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Oh, there are lots of other alternatives. Some things can happen by chance (unless you are a strict determinist, but then you have to deny free will); some things can be by design without an intelligent designer. That is, the processes of nature operate by internal, self-propelled drives to survive and reproduce which, together with climactic and catastrophic changes, and natural selection, bring about greater complexity by slight and incremental changes. After millions of years, these take on the appearance of design, although no external intelligence directed the process. Nevertheless, it is not entirely by chance but by a rigid absolute order that it occurs.
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SGWessells
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Assumption 1 is false. Genetic differences can occur when a duplicate gene assumes a different function or when a maladaptive gene piggybacks on an adaptive gene transfer.
Assumption 2 is just as much a total fabrication as the existence of Adam and Eve to begin with. It could only be true if Eve was made out of Adam’s rib, which is scientifically absurd; and even then, for Eve to have daughters (Gen. 5:4), she would have to have the female chromosome to pass on. Since she didn’t get it from Adam, she must have gotten it elsewhere; at any rate, they would not be genetically identical.
Assumption 3: Not sure which ancestry you refer to here. Is it that Adam and Eve are the common ancestors of all humans, or that all life descended from a common ancestor?
Assumption 4: What’s your point?
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SGWessells
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That’s like asking whether Ask and Embla (first couple in Norse mythology) had more genetic diversity than anyone imagined. Or speculating on the genetic composition of Hercules, or Xena, warrior princess. You’re building fantasy on top of fantasy here. But don’t stop here; it’s getting rather amusing, like the old question whether Adam had a belly button. Maybe we can have learned disquisitions on what color his hair was, or what the original language of Babel sounded like. Was Adam taller, or Eve? Did pre-fall tigers have canines and other teeth expressly designed for meat eating, even though they ate only green plants (Gen. 1:30)? Why didn’t God kill the fish in the Flood? Were they less wicked than the cows and dinosaurs? The prospects for embroidering the rather sparse details are endless.
Living human bodies? And after how long? Meat in our stomachs is dissolved in far less time than three days; what’s the stomach acid strength of this particular fish?
Or better yet, why not dismiss it as a moral parable, as C.S. Lewis suggested? Jesus could still use it as a comparison, the same way we refer to an unexpected success as a “Cinderella story” without believing in a literal Cinderella.
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You
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It could have been a whale, I suppose. Some whales could open their throats wide enough to swallow a beach ball. A small man with a slight frame would fit. Whales, some at least have a ‘pre-stomach’ like a crop in birds. It is used for temporarily storing their catch. It has no digestive glands or digestive acids. And as the whale is in the Mediterranean Sea it is therefore on the southern leg of its annual migration, in other words it will not have eaten, and will not eat for several months as it travels south. Only when it returns to its cold hunting grounds will it resume feeding. So its crop is also nicely clean and empty.
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tonyrey
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No refutation!
Occam’s Razor.
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Not necessary! The issue is the most adequate interpretation of reality.
I agree but that is a separate issue from Science and Religion.
Not to the same extent as the life of a nihilist…
I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of a person who believes that we - and everything else - exist for no reason or purpose whatsoever.
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tonyrey
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rossum
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Then Adam and Eve weren’t human. Humans have two copies of each allele. If Adam and Eve had more copies then they weren’t human. Humans are diploid. If Adam was tetraploid or more, then he wasn’t human.
rossum
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Ahimsa
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That would perhaps explain how Eve was able to come from Adam.
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rossum
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Huff’s reasoning is laid out in great detail in the paper. If you think it is incorrect, then show us your contrary reasoning, together with supporting data. The full human genome is available for anyone to study. Huff has done that. You need to do the same if you are to have any traction in this argument.rossum
Nobody’s word is needed. The evidence is present in modern human genomes. Techniques such as allele counts or Alu insertions allow population estimates to be made. No popoulation estimate has ever been as low as one breeding pair. See Huff et al, (2009) for an example of the sort of work being done on this question.
And there’s your problem. An estimate is not a fact. One can estimate that Moses did not exist. One can also estimate that Jesus is a fiction. None of these estimates are facts. You believe them not because they are true facts, but because you have a deep-seated craving to believe there is no God nor any specified Adam and Eve.
You are assuming that the copy of the Bible you have in front of you is the same as the copy that Moses, and others, wrote originally. Does that assumption invalidate all of Christianity? Many assumptions are reasonable; show us why Huff’s assumptions are unreasonable.
rossum
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