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

From: Alexanian, Moorad <alexanian@uncw.edu>
Date: Sat Feb 28 2009 - 16:13:32 EST

I do not know about the precise definition of statistics but about probability theory this is what Laplace said in 1819, “Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.”
Moorad

________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of David Opderbeck [dopderbeck@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 3:36 PM
To: Dick Fischer
Cc: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

I quote from the website of the Statistics Department at the University of Missouri: "Statistics is a modern science concerned with making decisions and inferences from empirical data subject to random variability and error." ( http://www.stat.missouri.edu/AboutUs/about_statistics.html)

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

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net<mailto:dickfischer@verizon.net>> wrote:

Interesting question. I took my course on statistics in the School of Business along with accounting, marketing, etc. My courses in psychology were taught in the School of Arts and Sciences. So all I can tell you is that at the University of Missouri it isn’t.

Yours faithfully,

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<mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com>
]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 11:13 AM
To:
Dick Fischer

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

Statistics aren't a science?

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

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Dick Fischer <dickfischer@verizon.net<mailto:dickfischer@verizon.net>> wrote:

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<http://www.genesisproclaimed.org>

-----Original Message-----
From: dopderbeck@gmail.com<mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com> [mailto: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<mailto: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<http://www.genesisproclaimed.org>

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu<mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu> [mailto: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<mailto: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<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<mailto: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> [mailto: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<mailto: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<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<http://tedlab.mit.edu/%7Edr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf>); Chang, Recent Common Ancestors of All Present-Day Individuals (http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf<http://www.stat.yale.edu/%7Ejtc5/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<mailto: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"

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

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Received on Sat Feb 28 16:14:29 2009

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