Re: [asa] Two questions... (bottlenecking)

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Douglas Hayworth
<haythere.doug@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:22 PM, David Clounch <david.clounch@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a question.
>>
>>> If you go back far enough, you should have a single ancestral pair for
>>> all modern humans.
>>
>> 1. Would that be true of all phyla that require sexual reproduction?
>>
>
> The statement does not mean that there was only one pair of
> individuals at that time. It only means that there is only one pair of
> individuals at that time who have descendents living today. All the
> other individuals contemporary with that ancestral pair do not have
> any descendents still living today. This sort of attrition or
> "turnover" is inevitable in almost any real type of population
> genetics scenerio. Somewhere in an old seminar presentation, I have a
> figure that makes this easy to see. I'll see if I can dig it up.
>
> Doug Hayworth
> Rockford, IL
>
I can see what you are getting at. The problem though, is that in
order for them to be the first humans in a Biblical sense they were
not just one pair out of many pairs. They were the original pair.
Now, biologically they could have been one pair out of many. But they
must have possessed some other unique characteristics and abilities
not possessed by the other pairs. Otherwise they were not the Adam and
Eve of Christianity...instead someone else was because there were
humans that came before them.

The idea that our Adam and our Eve, as a pair, are just one of many
many pairs of Adams and Eves in a population of humans is not
congruent with Christianity. Its outside the bounds of Christianity
as I understand Christianity.
Why do I say that? Because the one of many pairs idea indicates
that the original man and original woman perhap were not even mated.
Instead a pair of their descendants were mated (and became what we
think of as Adam and Eve). But if this were the case, the originals
were not created in any personal sense. And our Adam and Eve are
imposters because they are mere grandchildren of the originals. The
whole Biblical story is therefore terribly wrong. This is all rather
troubling.

Therefore, pardon my ignorance, I don't see the benefit of
considering whether the entire human race today was descended from one
pair if it was not T.H.E. original pair of all humans that ever
existed. Not if the idea of worrying about that is to prop up
Christianity.

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Received on Wed Feb 11 23:47:49 2009