For David Opderbeck and Dick
>>>>
Here is where my limited knowledge of genetics shows. Why is this so? Let's say God decides today to create a new kind of human with a bigger brain than ours. He takes my DNA and modifies it to create the first of these new humans. A couple hundred thousand years from now, someone analyzes the genetic history of these new humans. Wouldn't their genome include all the diversty of my genome? And doesn't my genome include all the diversity of the earlier expansions we've been talking about? <<<<
GRM:No, it wouldn't contain all the diversity of the previous expansions. We have 2 slots for each gene in our bodies. Often we have the identical genes in both slots. This is called homozygosity. Often we have a different gene in each slot. This is called heterozygosity. Each variant of a gene which can fit into that slot is called an allele. Each person has at most 2 alleles for each gene in his body but often, due to homozygosity, has only one.
GRM:If your genes were taken to form a new species and then your rib taken to form a new female for you, the number of alleles in this new species would be precisely 2 where you were heterozygous and precisely 1 where you were homozygous. That would mean practically no genetic variation in this species. The one would preserve limited variability and the species would look very young. Yes, you could preserve SOME indications of the age of humanity from which you came in SOME of the genes. If the two alleles in your body are so divergent in DNA sequence that it would take millions of years to accumulate the requisite mutations which separate them, then yeah, you would see some hints of ancient events. But the high levels of homozygosity and the limited number of alleles would mark this new species as specially created.
>>>>So if we have three waves of hominid migration from Africa with interbreeding, and God takes material from one of those "third wave" hominids and modifies it to form the first "human" made in His image, wouldn't all humans descended from that first Imago Dei Man include all the earlier genetic markers? <<<<<
No. It would only include a limited, very limited amount of the earlier genetic history. Because one can at most have 2 gene alleles under the Adam and Eve scenario, we would not be able to have the 100+ alleles in some of the MHC genes (which is our immune system). Indeed. there is an example of this in Bassett Hounds. Apparently all basset hounds are descended from 2 dogs in the 1870's. They have an attrocious immune system. They are subject to bubble-boy disease.. See this month's Discover Susan Kruglinski,” A Doctor’s Best Friend,” Discover, March, 2006, p. 15
The same thing would happen with A&E. We would have this perfect couple who couldn't fight off the common cold.
>>>As I understand Templeton, he isn't advocating multiregionalism, so there is no reason that all presently existing humans couldn't trace their lineage back to a single set of parents. It's just that that set of parents don't trace their lineage back to an isolated African population that replaced all existing homind populations after leaving Africa.
<<<<
Actually Templeton is a renown multiregionalist. Has been for years. And when he says that the recent origin of humanity with no interbreeding with the previous population (total replacement Out of Africa) is ruled out at the P~10^-17 level, what he is saying is that multiregionalism IS the only way to explain the data.
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I know it was in another thread but I am going to answer Dick's email in flood deposits in mesopotamia thread where he wrote:
>>>>There is a range of possibilities, Glenn, but I can’t tell you we have thought of all of them. For example, I really don’t think we have a handle on what Noah’s boat was like. I have a photocopy of the 1983 issue of Creation/Evolution which is “The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark.” The author, Robert Moore, raises so many objections in his lighthearted 43 page dissertation that it is hard to find a way to reconcile the biblical narrative no matter what you do.<<<
My version of the flood handles most of Moore's objections so long as one doesn't put every animal on earth on the ark. And, I don't have to move a boat uphill with poles or make the wind blow just so. Fill the Mediteranean basin up and you lift the boat. easy as pie. And the age of my flood fits the genetics of humanity (I know that people like Michael Roberts seem to be advocating not paying attention to the data and just declaring the Bible true by fiat, but if we do that, we then can't have the fun of making YECs squirm when they refuse to look at the data. The YECs are doing what Michael seems to be advocating. But we don't like it when they do it)
Received on Sun Mar 5 17:16:54 2006