The Story In Genesis Does Not Match The Story In Our Genes

"A study published by 22 authors (including myself) in the scientific journal Nature Genetics in November 2000 stated the results clearly and succinctly. A worldwide sample of men, from dozens of populations on every continent, were studied using the newly discovered treasure trove of Y-chromosome polymorphisms [only the male of the human species carries the Y-chromosome]. Applying the same methods used in the earlier mitochondrial DNA studies [women alone pass along the mitochondrial DNA], a tree diagram was constructed from the pattern of sequence variation. What this diagram showed was that the oldest splits in the ancestry of the Y chromosome occurred in Africa. In other words, the root of the male family tree was placed in Africa -- exactly the same answer that mitochrondrial DNA had given us for women. The shocker came when a date was estimated for the age of the oldest common ancestor. This man, from whom all men alive today ultimately derive their Y-chromosomes lived 59,000 years ago. More than 80,000 years after that estimated for 'Eve!' Did 'Adam' and 'Eve' never meet? No they didn't, but the reason is fairly complicated, and it reveals one of the most important things to remember about the study of human history with genetic methods... Such dates do not represent the date of origin of our species -- otherwise 'Eve' would have been waiting a long time for 'Adam' to show up. They simply represent the time, peering back into the past, when we stop seeing genetic diversity in our mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome lineages... As we'll see... the age difference between 'Adam' and 'Eve' is larger than we would expect by chance, and is probably the result of thousands of years of sexual politics [or two reproductive bottle-necks in the human geneologcial tree separated by tens of thousands of years? -- E.T.B.]. It is not, though, indicative of any deep uncertainties about human evolution. [Though it might be indicative of uncertainties about taking Genesis literally. -- E.T.B.]" [Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 53-55. (Well's book has also been made into a television series broadcast on PBS.)]

What is most interesting, above, is the way that the geneticists, have been able to minutely compare differences in the DNA from human beings round the world and determine the most likely ways those differences had accrued over time, just like examining a pile of similar but not identical "chain letters," noting which ones had certain sentences added, or changed round, or had certain punctuation added or removed, tracing the trail of changes made in such chain letters backward in time toward what earlier versions most probably looked like. If you have enough similar chain letters to compare, it's easy to see how this tracing-backward process can be done, and why it works. In fact there was an article about comparing chain-letters and how that relates to tracing back DNA patterns in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, "Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories;" June 2003; by Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma:

IN OUR HANDS ARE 33 VERSIONS OF A CHAIN LETTER, collected between 1980 and 1995, when photocopiers, but not e-mail, were in widespread use by the general public. These letters have passed from host to host, mutating and evolving. Like a gene, their average length is about 2,000 characters. Like a potent virus, the letter threatens to kill you and induces you to pass it on to your "friends and associates"-some variation of this letter has probably reached millions of people. Like an inheritable trait, it promises benefits for you and the people you pass it on to. Like genomes, chain letters undergo natural selection and sometimes parts even get transferred between coexisting "species." Unlike DNA, however, these letters are easy to read. Indeed, their readability makes them especially suitable for classroom teaching of phylogeny (evolutionary history) free from the arcana of molecular biology. The letters are an intriguing social phenomenon, but we are also interested in them because they provide a test bed for the algorithms used in molecular biology to infer phylogenetic trees from the genomes of existing organisms. We believe that if these algorithms are to be trusted, they should produce good results when applied to chain letters. Using a new algorithm that is general enough to have wide applicability to such problems, we have reconstructed the evolutionary history of our 33 letters [see illustration on page 79]. The standard methods do not work as well on these letters. Originally developed for genomes, our algorithm has also been applied to languages and used to detect plagiarism in student assignments: anything involving a sequence of symbols is grist for its mill. [END OF QUOTATION FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLE]

Geneticists continue making the most detailed maps of the DNA of each species, and will soon be able to trace more and more of their lineages backward in time by comparing the minute differences that have accrued in their DNA as they split off from each other. That's how they were able to determine that contemporary human beings came out of AFRICA -- as discussed in the first paragraph of this article. Meanwhile, Genesis says that Noah landed in the mountains of Ararat in modern day Armenia, NOT AFRICA, and Genesis goes on to claim that people settled in the "valley of Shinar" not very far from where Noah landed, and there they built the first major "city and tower," and then (after the "confusion of tongues"), they spread to the rest of the world. So the story in Genesis does not match the story in our genes.

Another case of such research was recently reported in NEW SCIENTIST (July 24-30, 2004, "Oz Origins for Perching Birds") that said scientists had studied the DNA of 144 species of passerines (perching birds) and discovered evidence that "suggests that the passerines began diversifying about 82 million years ago, when New Zealand split from Austalia. A major split within the lineage, between songbirds and a second group, came around 65 milion years ago. The songbirds later spread from Australia through Asia, while the others, a group containing flycatchers and ant birds, spread across South America." Again, as in the case of man, no evidence that the songbirds split from the other groups anywhere near the mountains of Armenia where Noah's ark allegedly landed. So it would seem that the story of Noah's ark remains doubtful in light of an increasing array of modern day genetic comparisons.

Cheers!

Ed

Darwin and Eugenics

This seems to me beside the point of arguing for or against creation, evolution, or design:

1) Even if Darwin and Galton were mass murderers, that would have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of evolutionary theories of their day or ours.

2) Injustice and inequalities and class systems can be found throughout history. Concentrating on the injustices of "eugenics" is simply to focus on one tiny aspect of all the injustices and inequalities and class systems on earth. Besides, for those who wish to discuss race, then let's discuss the history of Christianity and the extermination of "less Christian" races like the American Indians (whose extermination was compared by Puritan preachers to the following of the command of God to destroy the Canaanites), or let's discuss Christianity and slavery, or even some of Henry Morris's statements in the last ten years concerning the "curse of Ham," or let's discuss Christian racist groups like the KKK and apartheid South Africa, and Christian racist speeches throughout the ages. Bob Jones here in Greenville S.C. firmly believed and preached on his radio program that "If you are against segregation you are against God."

3) Billy and Oral and Pat are passing along their dynasty to their genetic heirs today. People tend to love their own children the best, don't they? As far as the future of eugenics goes, the human genome project is opening up a can of worms, since the odds of people coming down with various illnesses appears related to a person's genomic proclivities for those illnesses. Insurance companies are going to probably start taking advantage of that information in the future, and dividing people up into various risk categories, from low to high risk, and parents will probably want to make sure their children don't have those genetic illnesses, and the easiest way to do that is by assuring it at birth, by choosing their children's genome before conception. That will also assure the parents that their child will be healthier in both body and mind and live longer. That might be how the future will turn out. (See the movie GATTACA for some of the bad side to that scenario. But for some more positive aspects of eugenics and long lifespans read Robert Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE novel.)

I happen to agree with Darwin's comments concerning eugenics below, which doesn't mean I agree with everything Darwin ever said or wrote. "Choosing who would be on the registry" is a major problem.

Darwin points out a number of practical difficulties, of which the greatest, he thought, 'would be in deciding who deserved to be on the register; ... Though I see so much difficulty,' he concludes, 'the object is a grand one; ... yet I fear [it is] utopian.'" (Darwin C.R., letter to F. Galton, January 4, 1873, in Darwin F. and Seward A.C., eds., "More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Papers," John Murray: London, 1903, Vol. II, p.43, in Bowlby J., "Charles Darwin: A New Life," [1990], 1992, W.W. Norton and Co: New York, reprint, pp.415-416)

If we were discussing say, Christianity instead of Darwinisn, I could go on about the ways Christianity has influenced society and/or political systems, with plenty of dark examples.

As we learn more about the human genome, the question of how to use that knowledge for our own betterment will continue to raise questions of a "Eugenics" like nature. Eugenics is not simply Hitler's hatred of the Jews raised to a scientific dogma among Nazi "scientists" who salivated at the thought of exterminating them. Eugenics can mean simply wishing to conceive "better" human beings, healthier in mind and body. And with modern day knowlege of the genome increasing, the temptation to try and conceive humans that are in some ways "better" will be increasingly difficult to resist. That is not "Darwinism," that is plain fact. As if the way insurance companies might use that knowledge in future to raise the rates of those highest at risk, due to their genomic content of various risk factors.

As for "Darwinism" today, it appears to have remained a staple of modern day conservatives round the world who believe the poor and destitute need to be prodded by the hot poker of their disheartening circumstances, which will only make them "stronger" (or kill them it seems), while the wealthy need more corporate welfare and tax cuts. *smile* That kind of "Darwinism" is rife among modern day political conservatives (which oddly enough seem to be backed nowadays by their religiously conservative counterparts).

"Darwin not the founder of negative eugenics"
To combat the endless distortions of Darwin's ideas, an international team of 150 specialists in the biological sciences and human studies has, over a period of 10 years, achieved an historical and critical synthesis of Darwinism and evolutionary theory. At last the matter has been clarified: Darwin is not the father of modern anti-equalitarian theories; Darwin is the founder neither of negative eugenics nor of dogmas of the elimination of the weak; Darwin is not the justifier of Victorian imperialism. In short, Darwin is not responsible for "Social Darwinism". Edited by PATRICK TORT Presses Universitaires de France

Patrick Tort has recently set up the "Institut Charles Darwin International" (International Charles Darwin Institute) which has a two-fold purpose: to encourage original research on evolutionary biology and on the history of evolutionist thought, and to publish the complete works of Darwin in French (35 volumes).

History of Science Prize:
Patrick TORT, from the UMR 7596 research unit of CNRS, for his research on the works of Charles Darwin, in particular the publication of the "Dictionnaire du Darwinisme et de l'évolution" (Dictionary of Darwinism and of Evolution) and the creation of a new methodology (analysis of discursive complexes)designed for the analysis of the history of thought systems.

Racist theories of creationists...American theories of polygenesis
American Theories of Polygenesis is the first set in the Concepts of Race in the Nineteenth Century series edited by Robert Bernasconi. The seven-volume collection brings together key works on the creationist theory of polygenesis.

A creationist theory of the origins of racial differences.
In the mid-nineteenth century, American ethnological research was dominated by two polygenists, Samuel George Morton and Louis Agassiz. Their works on the subject are represented in this set, as are the major texts of the two most famous popularizers of polygenesis, Josiah Nott and George Gliddon. Charles Hamilton Smith's work, which was adopted by supporters of polygenesis in the United States, is included in its American edition, as is the translation of Arthur Gobineau's classic essay on the inequality of the human races by Henry Hotz, a work which Nott and Hotz doctored to bring into line with American polygenesis. This set is completed with a volume by John Bachman, an American opponent of Nott and Gliddon, and another by Alexander Winchell, a representative of the next generation of American polygenists. Historians of science, anthropology, American philosophy and evolution will find this collection indispensable for understanding one of the key debates on race in the nineteenth century.

collection of rare primary sources on American polygenesis in the nineteenth century

important examination of a nineteenth-century scientific concept of race

Volume 1
Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana: Or, a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. To which is prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species (1839)

Samuel George Morton, 'Crania Aegyptiaca', from Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 9 1844)

Volume 2
Charles Hamilton Smith, The Natural History of the Human Species. With a Preliminary Abstract by S. Kneeland (1851)

Volume 3
Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon, Types of Mankind (1854)

Volume 4
Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon, Indigenous Races of the Earth (1857)

Volume 5
John Bachman, The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race Examined on the Principles of Science (1850)

Volume 6
Joseph Arthur de Count Gobineau, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, transl. By Henry Hotz (1856)

Volume 7
Alexander Winchell, Preadamites (1880)

Creationists invented the first "racial" theories
The following creationists were products and producers of the prejudices of their era concerning ideas of "race":

Use of race as a way to classify large divisions of Homo sapiens originated with Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) [a creationist]. Johann Blumenbach [another creationist] was the first to use the word "race," and use of this word has remained largely unchanged in common and medical contexts.

Creationist Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish taxonomist and botanist, was the first to place humans in a taxonomy of animals, in his Systema Naturae in 1758. He divided humans into four main groups on the basis of physical and psychological impressions: Europeans, who were "fair gentle, acute, inventive governed by laws"; Americans, who were "copper-coloured obstinate, content free regulated by customs"; Asiatics, who were "sooty severe, haughty, covetous governed by opinions"; and Africans, who were "black crafty, indolent, negligent governed by caprice."

Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of men." Both Linnaeus and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories.

These men were products and producers of the prejudices of their era, but it is remarkable how similar the concept and categories of race remain today, even after it has been widely documented that phenotypic and biochemical variations do not correlate simply with genotypic differences.