ASA - February 2009: RE: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

From: Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
Date: Sat Feb 28 2009 - 11:05:21 EST

Dear David:

We are not talking science but statistics and extrapolation. For example,
the percentage of the U S population over 65 years of age is steadily
increasing. Projecting the rate of increase, by the year 2050 100% of the
US population will be over 65. What does that ignore? People over 65 don't
procreate. You got to read between the lines a little, David. The average
MRCA between humans was stated at about 800 years in the first article.
Okay, my brother and I are 10 years apart. Average all the billions of
people who have a very recent common ancestor with those separated by racial
distinctions and geography and whose MRCA is 60 million years ago, and
voila, you get a meaningless average.

I completely agree with you that drawing lines of ancestry using DNA markers
is more accurate than judging body types, coloration and stuff like that.
You are absolutely, totally correct. I never disagreed with you on that.
But racial distinctions are valid indicators and easily discerned with the
naked eye - just less accurate, that's all.

All that to say that I believe it cannot be verified and it is counter
intuitive to think that a family from the Near East starting out 5,000 years
ago could have impregnated every person in China, Japan, the Congo,
Scandinavia, Siberia, etc. Especially when you consider that Jews don't
mix. The idea that Jewish males would journey to China and impregnate
Chinese women is virtually unthinkable. Now if you have some "science" in
that regard .

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: dopderbeck@gmail.com [mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 10:20 AM
To: Dick Fischer
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Sigh. That has nothing to do with your notions of the origins of "races".
Where's the "science," dick? The scientific consensus is against you

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

_____

From: "Dick Fischer"
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:19:35 -0500
To: 'David Opderbeck'<dopderbeck@gmail.com>
Subject: RE: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Okay, David, your indignation has been duly recorded. Notwithstanding every
mortgage application has a box for ethnicity as well as most job
applications and don't forget this is Black History month.

Yours faithfully,

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 10:56 AM
To: Dick Fischer
Cc: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Dick said: Our global society is homogenizing that's right and the subject
of race conjures up images of discrimination and slavery and all that. Yes
I know. We're a polite society now.

I respond: I don't think it has anything to do with "politness." It has to
do with truth, and with the lies, distortions and evils that have been
perpetrated historically in the name of the false notion of "race." Given
the scientific consensus against morphology equating to "race," it seems to
me that the view you're trying to take isn't consistent with contemporary
science at all. Moroever, I think it has some pernicious roots that can
lead to bad consequences. The very ideas about the division of "races" that
you're promoting now underwrote the "Christian" theology of African slavery
in American south. I don't suggest you buy into that ideology, but I also
shudder at a system that perpetuates such ideas.

Dick said: But you're meandering off the path a bit. Could one billion
Chinese people have Adamic roots or even a smidgen of Adamic blood? No, I
don't think so.

I respond: To the contrary, that is exactly what the studies I cited show
is plausible if not probable -- with the proviso that "blood" is a
meaningless term and we are not talking about genes. The studies I cited
suggest that all of the one billion Chinese people alive today share a
common ancestor with you and me. That ancestor is not Adam of course, but
this demonstrates the rapidity with which ancestry propogates. You haven't
cited any statistical models, studies, etc. to the contrary. I'd love to
just wave off the Ayala MHC study and other such statistical models that I
don't like, but lacking expertise and with no significant peer reviewed work
to the contrary, I have to assume they're generally accurate. I think it's
fair to assume the same about studies I do like without a similar degree of
contrary evidence.

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
wrote:

Our global society is homogenizing that's right and the subject of race
conjures up images of discrimination and slavery and all that. Yes I know.
We're a polite society now. But you're meandering off the path a bit.
Could one billion Chinese people have Adamic roots or even a smidgen of
Adamic blood? No, I don't think so. There is nothing that suggests any of
Noah's kin ventured any further east than Persia. Furthermore, Jewish
people are exceptionally clannish. They hardly marry outside their race at
all. And even if a few adventurous Semites did venture to the Far East, and
I don't think they did, it would be a drop in the bucket only.

To answer your question, the "races" were long divided before the flood.
The Ice Man washed out of the Tyrolean Alps carbon dated to about 5,200
years ago and he didn't look any different than people in that same region
do today. Hamites did go south and "Cush" means "black" in Hebrew, Mizraim
went to Egypt, but that's about the only connection. Egyptian pyramids show
men in different colors depicting the different "races."

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/>

-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck

[mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com]

Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 10:47 AM
To:

Dick Fischer

Cc: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

But in anthropology, "race" is an outdated notion. We can discern
morphological features common to a time, place or region from skeletons,
which is not surprising, given that some areas of the human genome that
determine some morphological features such as facial or eye structure or
skin pigmentation can come under selection pressure. But there are no
meaningful criteria for dividing these features into "races." Rather, we
are all human beings with a continuum of variations in things like facial
structure and skin tone. I refer you to the American Anthropological
Association Statement on "Race" (http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm) and
a Wiki on the term "Negroid" which has some good links about why "race" is
an outdated folk notion(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negroid), including
this one: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-08.htm

Do you think the so-called "negroid race" descends from Ham and bears the
mark of Cain?

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
wrote:

Hi David:

Forensic scientists can tell a racial type from nothing more than a
skeleton. They do it all the time. For one example, Negroids (I know you
don't like the term but it designates a racial type) have a skull shape that
is elongated front to back, Asiatics have a round skull, while Caucasians
have a rounded skull with a flat forehead. Of course, there are deviations
around the norm. And there has been racial mixing, more so in recent years,
but the native Irish Celts, for one example, have been an isolated breeding
population for thousands of years. The Japanese have remained an isolated
breeding population due to their living on an island as well. As have
Pygmys who just don't travel a lot. As have Aborigines who have lived in
Australia for 40,000 years.

Those theoretical, mathematical probability theories don't factor in
geographical reality.

Having said that, I know there are many instances of racial mixing.
Mexicans are mostly a mix of Aztec and Spanish immigrants, some of the
Spanish were Jews. Many black Americans have some Caucasian blood as a
result of slave conditions in the south. These are realities too. But
there are billions on this earth who cannot possibly have eminated from
Noah's three sons who began to spread out less than 5000 years ago.

Being in God's image is another matter entirely.

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/>

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck

Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 7:57 PM
To: Dick Fischer
Cc: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Dick -- I don't think it's merely "political correctness" to suggest that
18th Century ideas about "race" based on morphology were discredited long,
long ago. All human beings are equally made in God's image.

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
wrote:

Hi David:

Well, if you mean, say, 60,000 years ago, yes you are right. But if you
took a black African, a Chinese person and a Norwegian, and traced them back
to a common ancestor it would certainly be long, long before the 2900 BC
flood, which is my point.

Do a thought experiment with me. Picture a group of Arabs next to a group
of Jews. Dress them alike. Could you tell which group is which? Maybe you
could, but could you quantify a list of morphological differences between
them? I doubt it. Well if that is the amount of divergence we see from
4,000 years of separation from a common ancestor, Abraham, how much
difference would we expect just going back an additional ten generations to
Noah? There are greater morphological and linguistic differences among
various tribes in Africa separated by only a few hundred miles than there is
between Arabs and Jews. Why? Because they have been separated from a
common ancestor much longer.

Now, if you want to disregard the genealogies in Genesis 5, 10, and 11, and
the historical ties to the history of the ancient Near East, and all the
references to Neolithic culture in Genesis just to force fit the Genesis
story into some politically correct scenario, at least realize what you are
doing, tell everybody that your just winging it, and have a good reason for
going way outside the bounds of probability. I don't think you have one.

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

www.genesisproclaimed.org <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/>

-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck

[mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com]

Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 11:12 AM
To:

Dick Fischer

Cc: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

I don't agree Dick. Any number of studies have shown that every living
person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to a common ancestor
who lived only a few thousand years ago, though obviously this person was
not the only person alive at the time, nor will most of us have inherited
genes directly from that person. See, e.g., Rhode, On the Common Ancestors
of All Living Humans (http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf);
Chang, Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals
(http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf).

A focus on "bloodlines," I think, is archaic -- that's a scientifically
meaningless term. A focus on the coalescence of genes, I think, is foreign
to the Biblical text and unproductive. The focus ought to fall, I think, on
geneology, which is what the papers referenced above discuss.

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net>
wrote:

Hi David, you wrote:

>Certainly by the time the scriptures are written, all living people can
trace their genealogy to Adam, though genetically the human population is
more diverse than n of 2.<

When I launched into this project in 1984 that's what I thought too. I had
surmised that the flood could terminate all mankind and that Noah's wife was
outside the Adamic line such that all living today could trace their
ancestry back to Adam and also through Noah's wife all the way back to the
apes in Africa. It was a good idea I thought, but early on in my research I
found it didn't line up with the facts of history. The flood is far too
late and Adam is far too late in history that we all can be related to the
covenant family. If you wanted to be related to Adam and Noah you should
have chosen parents who were Arabs or Jews or Greeks. If you didn't,
chances are you're unrelated genetically to the covenant couple. Oh, well.

When Christ died for us all, the hope of salvation became available to all
mankind. He urged his disciples to preach to every "creature," removing all
doubt that gentiles were welcome in the kingdom of God. The other thing
that may not be as apparent is the issue of accountability. Who was
accountable before Christ? I submit it was only those in the Line of
Promise, the children of Israel. That would exclude all gentiles everywhere
including those who did have Adamic roots, the children of Japheth and Ham,
and perhaps even the Assyrians, for example, who were from the line of Shem.
So the sin nature apparent in all mankind is not the issue in my estimation
- it's only accountability.

What we can gather from that is that those who were outside were not held
accountable, but when they were recruited into the family of Israel they
became accountable. Today everyone is accountable, perhaps, or maybe only
those who hear the gospel and have the opportunity to accept or reject. I
don't have an opinion on that. But the important point is that bloodlines
are of no importance.

Dick Fischer, GPA president

Genesis Proclaimed Association

"Finding Harmony in Bible, Science and History"

<http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> www.genesisproclaimed.org

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Received on Sat Feb 28 11:05:50 2009

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