Re: Genealogical Gaps?

From: <glennmorton@entouch.net>
Date: Tue Feb 28 2006 - 08:07:36 EST

Terry Gray wrote:

 

>>>Doesn't the MHC data rule out any single individual (or pair) bottleneck--including your very ancient Adam? As I understand it some of the polymorphisms go back to chimps.<<<

 

Which is precisely why one could KNOW 10 years ago that the mtDNA Eve was NOT the genetic history of the world and why I have remained a multiregionalist in the face of strong wind blowing the other way for quite sometime (maybe Templeton will finally change things I still haven't heard any response to my post where those ooA folks are--eerily silent on this issue).

 

  I have puzzled about this problem for a long, long time. It is not just a problem for me, it is a problem for all views which hold to the specialness of mankind. The lack of a bottleneck is worse than you paint it. I have posted a quotation from Ayala here from time to time that says that a bottleneck is ruled out for the past 30 million years.  Thus, mtDNA Eve is fictional nonsense. She is NOT the mother of all humans merely 100kyr ago.  So is any view which holds to a more recent Adam and Eve. And, so would my view be if a solution can’t be found.

 

Typically the responses are like this:

The YEC view says “The Bible is true regardless of what I or science observes, thus genetics be damned full speed ahead.”

 

The ID view says “God used similar genetic systems from other animals and miraculously created man”

 

The TE view generally says: “The Bible teaches only theology all else is accommodated  science to the culture of the day—in other words, nonsense”

 

The atheist says: “The whole thing is false.”

 

None of those are satisfactory to me although the one that actually fits the facts is the last one.  Thus, one must either explain this or  go to the last one.  The only-theology solution is not satisfactory to me for reasons recently outlined on this list.

 

In order to explain this, one must talk about the origin of man in my view. Many may not know the odd way I solve our connection with the chimps. I have God miraculously fix up a stillborn ape who had a chromosomal fusion (we have less chromosomes than the chimps due to two chimp chromosomes fusing together.)  The would be no female for him, thus necessitating the rib surgery.  Thus, A&E are born. This explains the close pseudogene and chromosomal structure problem. We share some amazing (but useless) pseudogenes with the chimps and I can't figure out why God would do the equivalent of what an auto designer would be doing if he welded a broken transmission to the roof of the car. Yeah, it is designed,..... but....kind of weird. Thus there must be a real connection between us and the apes.

 

The chromosomal fusion could have been naturalistic but I hold to the miraculous because that is what the bible says. This type of fusion/fission evolution is common among the mammals. Equiids of all types have different chromosome numbers.  Przewalsky’s horse, the horse you see painted on upper Paleolithic caves was found living in Asia.  It has two more chromosomes than the modern horse, yet they are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring.  The reason is that the two chromosomes on Przewalsky’s horse align with the unbroken one of the Horse.  This fact is important in explaining the  lack of a bottleneck which genetics clearly shows (although most Christians ignore this evidence for no bottleneck in their rush to believe mtDNA Eve.) One thing is certain. Placing Adam and Eve nearer our time only worsens the problem with many other genetic systems, making us have to have hypermutating gene systems to get the variability seen in modern humans in some nuclear genes. It solves nothing.

 

Here is how I have figured out how to solve it.  The flood is anthropologically universal, but not biologically universal.  The Nephilim, existed before and after the flood. We interbred with them after the flood.  It is the only way to work the problem I have seen. The alternative is to believe in a bottleneck without any evidence (a YEC response). We can claim God created Adam 100kyr ago miraculously but gave our genes the illusion of an age they don’t have (a OEC view that rivals the YEC apparent age argument). We can  claim theology is all there is (which is a claim that can be made by any religion in the world with scientific nonsense in its teaching and is a quite ad hoc answer). We can claim it is all false.  Or, we can let the data speak and go where I go—which seems to be where no man has gone before or wants to go. :-)  So from Capt. Kirk, this is my answer.

 

This year I have made 6 trips across the arctic ocean so I have been very jet-lagged.  One of the benefits of living a jetlagged life is that one wakes at 2-4 am and gets to lie in bed thinking a lot (which may be dangerous). Last night I think I came up with an interesting variation on the dynastic line idea for the genealogies. So, here is a new (I think) variation on the dynastic explanation of the genealogies.

 

Lets say you have a lineage like this. The numbers are birth year, date of being a father and death:

 

Joe    1,20,60

Samuel 20,45,50

William 45, 70,105

John   70,100,140

Sanjay  100, 120,150

George 120, 145, 180

Terry  145, 160, 170 (playboy, died of a disease)

Samuel 160, 185, 225

Dick 185, 205, 238

 

Now, as the genealogy became longer, memory became tougher so, originally a memnonic was developed and the genealogy listed as:

 

Joe 1,20,60

The Samuels 20, 45,225

Dick 185, 205, 238

 

Then it was forgotten that Samuels is a group of people:

 

Joe 1,20,60

Samuel 20, 45,225

Dick 185, 205, 238

 

 

 

The genealogy would be true but abbreviated. And would give the false impression that  Sam lived 205 years. And, such a view would not make things untrue. As I said earlier, the Day in 1888 that William Henry Morton fathered George Washington Morton was the day he also fathered me (not that he knew it). It would also not require dynastic interpretation of people’s names. The people are real people not dynasties.

Received on Tue Feb 28 08:12:42 2006