Genetics and Genesis

[Steve Petersen]

Read an interesting article in the latest edition of Newsweek.

It seems that about 5800 years ago, homsapiens finally got the benefits of the ASPM gene and it was about this time that the first cities were constructed in the Near East. This is in rough accord with Genesis that indicates that one of the first activities of mankind was the construction of cities in the Near East. Biblical chronology puts that about 6000 year ago.

I see the story of Adam and Eve, not as the story of the first man and woman, but as the story of the development of farming and animal husbandry (as opposed to hunting and gathering.) These activities produced a surplus of food which allowed the creation of settled communities.

I believe it is also possible that they represent the earliest ancestors to which the ancestors of the Jews could trace their lineage. Thus, the children of Adam and Eve did not marry sibling, but married other homsapiens nearby.

I think this could also answer the question of who were the 'sons of God' mentioned in Genesis. I suggest that they were simply the ancestors of the Jews. This was necessary to make a distinction between the Jewish line and other.

Just some thoughtsl. No dogma here. Open to other views.

 

[Deamiter]

I'd look seriously at the literary technique of inflating ages in the ancient near east. I read today (on these boards somewhere) that Egyptians would record a person's age as 110 years if they were a good, upstanding Egyptian, and certainly the Assyrian kings list inflates ages even a bit more than the Bible.

It was hardly dishonest any more than saying "Jesus is a vine" would be dishonest -- it was simply a way of honoring one's ancestors in the ancient near east.

6000 years ago does indeed correspond with the beginnings of many civilizations, but I'd be hesitant to use it as a hard date based on the Biblical geneologies.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I'd look seriously at the literary technique of inflating ages in the ancient near east. I read today (on these boards somewhere) that Egyptians would record a person's age as 110 years if they were a good, upstanding Egyptian, and certainly the Assyrian kings list inflates ages even a bit more than the Bible.

I'd really like a citation or a source document on that. Not that I'm doubting the claim, I just think it's pretty interesting and would like to be able to look it up myself from time to time.

 

[busterdog]

I'd look seriously at the literary technique of inflating ages in the ancient near east. I read today (on these boards somewhere) that Egyptians would record a person's age as 110 years if they were a good, upstanding Egyptian, and certainly the Assyrian kings list inflates ages even a bit more than the Bible.

It was hardly dishonest any more than saying "Jesus is a vine" would be dishonest -- it was simply a way of honoring one's ancestors in the ancient near east.

6000 years ago does indeed correspond with the beginnings of many civilizations, but I'd be hesitant to use it as a hard date based on the Biblical geneologies.

Today you could call someone a vine and it would be ok. But, the age thing would be lying. It seems to need a little more evidence to make it ok then but not ok now. Lots of people do it now and it is regarded as vanity. Does it help that lots of people did it then?

 

[Jimlarmore]

I think we either accept the Bible as being valid for historical facts or we throw it out as a mere ancient anthology that is merely interesting to read and study. The Bible tells us in Genesis that God created the earth and it's biota in 6 literal days. The hebrew word each time the Bible says the evening and the morning was the 1st thru 6th day is Yom. Yom is interpreted to be a literal 24 hour day as we know them today. Also, those in the God-head conversed on the 6th day and said "Let us make man" and proceeded to do that. If man already existed this would not make any sense at all.

The truth of the matter is it takes faith to embrace either the Bible or the goddless theories of science like unassisted abiogeneis. This board is about origins, the Bible tells us how we originated. We either believe it or we don't. I choose to believe it.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Mallon]

The hebrew word each time the Bible says the evening and the morning was the 1st thru 6th day is Yom. Yom is interpreted to be a literal 24 hour day as we know them today.

As a YEC, how can you be sure, though? The oft-touted apologetic in defense of the YEC worldview is that uniformitarianism is wrong. So how do you know the length of a day has always been 24 hours? Why not 25 hours? Why not 45 days? 1,253 years?

 

[Assyrian]

You are assuming that time measurements are always literal everywhere else in scripture. That simply isn't the case. Was God lying when he told Adam he would surely die the day he ate from the tree? Yet according to Genesis Adam live to 930. Which is true?

What about Gen 6:3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in adam forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years."

A few verses later God says Gen 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made adam on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out the adam whom I have created from the face of the land, adam and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them."

Did Adam die the day he ate the fruit Gen 2:17, were his days 120 years Gen 6:3, or did he live to 930 Gen 5.5, or did he drown in the flood Gen 6:7, which if you add up generations in Genesis, came 1656 years after Adam was created.

Another alternative is that there is something symbolic in the numbers that we simply don't understand all these millennia later. Of course symbolic number are hardly unusual in the bible. Certainly the ages of the patriarchs do not seem the random selection of numbers you would expect if they were simply a collection of people's ages. Instead what we see are multiples of 5 or a (multiple of 5)+7, giving us ages ending in 0, 2, 5 or 7.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Today you could call someone a vine and it would be ok. But, the age thing would be lying.

Yeah, but not then. Plus, Near Eastern cultures operate on shame/honor principles, not abstract Western concepts of rightness/wrongness. The whole idea of facts = truth is a modern construct. Many things can be truthful (and not lying) without being factual.

For instance, Plato ascribed many of his writings to Socrates. Was he lying? No, in the ancient world it was considered dishonest to claim your work as your own if you thought of yourself as being in the 'school of thought' of another person. That is, since Plato thought of himself as Socratic, he ascribed his writings to Socrates and gifted western civilization with the Socratic dialogue.

Indeed, I would argue that something very similar is going on in the Pastoral Epistles- someone is crediting Paul with their work in order to honor the intellectual founder of their form of Christianity.

But to get back to the point at hand- non-factual statements are not always dishonest or untruthful. They can simply be more imaginative or artistic renderings of truths.

As a YEC, how can you be sure, though? The oft-touted apologetic in defense of the YEC worldview is that uniformitarianism is wrong. So how do you know the length of a day has always been 24 hours? Why not 25 hours? Why not 45 days? 1,253 years?

Hahahaha... that's a fantastic point.

Indeed, why hold to six-day creationism at all, if uniformitarianism is a false principle? Why can't the day-agers be right?

 

[busterdog]

The whole idea of facts = truth is a modern construct.

We could argue that one all day long.

The OT has a little bit to say about truth, suggesting that you are wrong.

 

[busterdog]

As a YEC, how can you be sure, though? The oft-touted apologetic in defense of the YEC worldview is that uniformitarianism is wrong. So how do you know the length of a day has always been 24 hours? Why not 25 hours? Why not 45 days? 1,253 years?

That wouldn't bother me at all.

 

[gluadys]

The truth of the matter is it takes faith to embrace either the Bible or the goddless theories of science like unassisted abiogeneis. This board is about origins, the Bible tells us how we originated. We either believe it or we don't. I choose to believe it.

God Bless
Jim Larmore

There can't be a scientific theory of unassisted abiogenesis since that is a metaphysical not a scientific claim.

There can be a scientific theory of natural abiogenesis, but unless you claim that nature excludes the action of God, "natural" does not imply "unassisted".

If all of nature is sustained by God's providence, all natural processes are assisted by divine power. Nothing in science makes this an untenable proposition.

 

[sfs]

Read an interesting article in the latest edition of Newsweek.

It seems that about 5800 years ago, homsapiens finally got the benefits of the ASPM gene and it was about this time that the first cities were constructed in the Near East.

I have grave doubts about the accuracy of the ASPM work. I assume the article is referring to a paper on ASPM by Bruce Lahn's group, which claimed a recent origin for a particular variant form of ASPM and evidence for positive natural selection acting on that variant. There is an article in the works that challenges both conclusions, using more data and a more complete analysis. So I think that when the complete story is told, this link is unlikely to hold up.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

The whole idea of facts = truth is a modern construct.

We could argue that one all day long.

The OT has a little bit to say about truth, suggesting that you are wrong.

Oh really?

Some something must be factually accurate in order to be truthful?

I'm not suggesting that factually inaccurate propositions in themselves can be truthful. I'm suggesting that a series or set of propositions that may be factually inaccurate may be not trying to convey those facts, but are instead conveying a larger truth.

And I'm also saying that although all facts are truths, not all truths are facts, such that the set/series of factual accuracies is a subset of truth.

So a, b, and c may be factually incorrect, but they can still collectively convey truth p, and also that although all factual truths (scientific/historical facts) are contained within proposition x, there also might exist non-scientific, non-historical truths y and z that are also truths, though they are not facts.

 

[Jadis40]

Read an interesting article in the latest edition of Newsweek.

It seems that about 5800 years ago, homsapiens finally got the benefits of the ASPM gene and it was about this time that the first cities were constructed in the Near East. This is in rough accord with Genesis that indicates that one of the first activities of mankind was the construction of cities in the Near East. Biblical chronology puts that about 6000 year ago.

I see the story of Adam and Eve, not as the story of the first man and woman, but as the story of the development of farming and animal husbandry (as opposed to hunting and gathering.) These activities produced a surplus of food which allowed the creation of settled communities.

I believe it is also possible that they represent the earliest ancestors to which the ancestors of the Jews could trace their lineage. Thus, the children of Adam and Eve did not marry sibling, but married other homsapiens nearby.

I think this could also answer the question of who were the 'sons of God' mentioned in Genesis. I suggest that they were simply the ancestors of the Jews. This was necessary to make a distinction between the Jewish line and other.

Just some thoughtsl. No dogma here. Open to other views.

Actually, I was trying to formulate a similar line of thought. It very well could be that Adam and Eve weren't the first two humans on earth, but rather the first of the line that lead to Mary and Joseph and ultimately our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Recently, I was browsing the internet and came across some interesting genetic studies, and it deals mainly with the genetic markers of the Cohen, or priests of the Israelites.

I think you might want to check these links out:

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts-cohen-levite.html

The first one has a lot of abstracts on journal articles that discusses this, and below are two articles:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9B0CE6DF133DF934A1575AC0A9659C8B63

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/07/980714071409.htm

The interesting thing though is that Jesus' lineage came through Judah, and they didn't serve as priests.

 

[Deamiter]

Today you could call someone a vine and it would be ok. But, the age thing would be lying. It seems to need a little more evidence to make it ok then but not ok now. Lots of people do it now and it is regarded as vanity. Does it help that lots of people did it then?

When people do it today they intend to lie. However, if a person was called 110 years old in Egypt, it wasn't intended to cover up their true age but to honor their lives and accomplishments (note that Joseph who had rather conspicuous ties in Egypt was the only one bestowed this honor in the Bible). Do read the article below for more information on the ancient middle eastern use of sacred numbers. It has plenty of citations which might be important to you as it's necessarily an overview and not meant to demonstrate every detail of evidence leading to the conclusions.

It's just such a huge mistake to assume that numbers were and have always been used only to count. If you believe this, please do a little research into the Assyrian, Egyptian and Hebrew sacred numbers and you might find why citing a period as '40 days' when it really lasted 32 has more meaning and contains more truth even though it isn't factually accurate.

I'd really like a citation or a source document on that. Not that I'm doubting the claim, I just think it's pretty interesting and would like to be able to look it up myself from time to time.

Warning -- PDF (675 KB)
http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Hill.pdf

The fact that the numbers in Genesis may have been “contrived”
or “intentional” rather than “real” is difficult for
many people to accept. Does this compromise the integrity
of the Bible and mean that the Bible cannot be trusted?
Does it mean that it cannot be taken “literally”? No, it
means only that the text must be approached from the
culture of the people who wrote it. We have
to try and “get into the minds” of these
ancient people and understand what made
them tick—just like modern missionaries
must try and understand the world view
of the people they are trying to evangelize.
In the case of Genesis, we must try to understand
the text from the world view of the
ancient Near East of ~2000 BC, not from the
world view of the early 1600s AD (King
James) Europe or the scientific world view of
the twentieth through twenty-first centuries.
Peoples of the ancient Near East simply did
not think along the same lines, or express
themselves in the same manner, as the European
races.65
The important question to ask is: Is Genesis,
and the record of the patriarchs from
Adam to Abraham, to be considered mythological
or historical? Ironically, by interpreting
the numbers of Genesis “literally”
Christians have created a mythological world
that does not fit with the historical or scientific
record. Or as Hyers aptly put it: “unwittingly,
‘literal’ or ‘concordist’ views are
secular rather than sacred interpretations of
the text.”66 The “literal” (or numerical) view
is secular while the “symbolic” (or numerological)
view is sacred because that is how
the original biblical author(s) intended for it
to be. To faithfully interpret Genesis is to be
faithful to what it really means as it was
written, not to what people living in a later
age assume or desire it to be. It is also ironic
that the mythological world created by
many well-intentioned and serious “literal”
Christians, based partly on the numbers in
Genesis, has caused millions of people to
reject the Bible and the truths contained
therein.

 

[mark kennedy]

Read an interesting article in the latest edition of Newsweek.

It seems that about 5800 years ago, homsapiens finally got the benefits of the ASPM gene and it was about this time that the first cities were constructed in the Near East. This is in rough accord with Genesis that indicates that one of the first activities of mankind was the construction of cities in the Near East. Biblical chronology puts that about 6000 year ago.

I see the story of Adam and Eve, not as the story of the first man and woman, but as the story of the development of farming and animal husbandry (as opposed to hunting and gathering.) These activities produced a surplus of food which allowed the creation of settled communities.

I believe it is also possible that they represent the earliest ancestors to which the ancestors of the Jews could trace their lineage. Thus, the children of Adam and Eve did not marry sibling, but married other homsapiens nearby.

I think this could also answer the question of who were the 'sons of God' mentioned in Genesis. I suggest that they were simply the ancestors of the Jews. This was necessary to make a distinction between the Jewish line and other.

Just some thoughtsl. No dogma here. Open to other views.

Pardon the dogma but you are assuming that the human ASPM gene could have evolved from apes.

You would need an indel mutation rate of 1.1 x 10^-10/site/year (Thats just over 1 indel per million base pairs per year) for a total of 1019 indels. All indels had to be of sizes that are multiples of three nucleotides so as not to disrupt the open reading frame (ORF). The human ASPM has 28 coding exons, spanning 62 kb in chromosome 1p31 and encoding a huge protein of 3477 amino acids requiring 1019 indels. (see Evolution of the Human ASPM Gene, a Major Determinant of Brain Size, Jianzhi Zhang available free online)

Here's the best part, guess what happens when mutations are introduced into the highly conserved region of the human genome? Give up!

ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated) is one of such genes, as nonsense mutations lead to primary microcephaly, a human disease characterized by a 70% reduction in brain size. Evolution of the Human ASPM Gene, a Major Determinant of Brain Size


Mind you the computer simulations required 6 million years under a neutral model assuming that the nucleotides were coming in groups of threes and did not disrupt the reading frame. Wanna know why?

Because this is what happens:

A permanent structural alteration in DNA. In most cases, DNA changes either have no effect or cause harm, but occasionally a mutation can improve an organism's chance of surviving and passing the beneficial change on to its descendants.​

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, defines mutation.

After the amino acid sequences are arranged in triplet codons producing a protein the folds into it's required for a beneficial effect thousands of times, then the explanation for how this is possible come forward.

Natural Selection did it.

 

[Deamiter]

Here's a quote from the abstract in Mark's first link:

Here I provide evidence suggesting that human ASPM went through an episode of accelerated sequence evolution by positive Darwinian selection after the split of humans and chimpanzees but before the separation of modern non-Africans from Africans. Because positive selection acts on a gene only when the gene function is altered and the organismal fitness is increased, my results suggest that adaptive functional modifications occurred in human ASPM and that it may be a major genetic component underlying the evolution of the human brain.

Amazing how the experts in this field find it entirely plausable yet for some reason we're asked to doubt their conclusions because... Mark finds it implausable.

 

[mark kennedy]

Here's a quote from the abstract in Mark's first link:

Here I provide evidence suggesting that human ASPM went through an episode of accelerated sequence evolution by positive Darwinian selection after the split of humans and chimpanzees but before the separation of modern non-Africans from Africans. Because positive selection acts on a gene only when the gene function is altered and the organismal fitness is increased, my results suggest that adaptive functional modifications occurred in human ASPM and that it may be a major genetic component underlying the evolution of the human brain.​

Here he presents evidence that if we evolved from apes then these are the requisite mutations. This was based on computer simulations of random mutations accumulating over 6 million years in groups of three so as not to shut the reading frame down. Three possible explanations:

1) Complete functional relaxation does not adequately explain the elevation of dN/dS:...The fact that nonsense mutations in ASPM lead to microcephaly also demonstrates the presence of functional constraints on the gene. Thus, the hypothesis of complete relaxation of functional constraints and lack of purifying selection for the past 6–7 MY of human evolution is inconsistent with the data

2) Signatures of purifying selection from population genetic data:The entire coding sequence of ASPM is determined from 14 human individuals of different geographic origins. A total of 33 single-nucleotide polymorphisms are found (Table 1 and Table 2). The derived and ancestral alleles are inferred using the chimpanzee and orangutan sequences as outgroups...This indicates that human ASPM is currently under relatively strong purifying selection, and the strength of selection is comparable to or even greater than that in the long-term evolution of mammalian ASPM.

3) Comparison of polymorphism and divergence suggests past positive selection:...I identified 16 nonsynonymous and 6 synonymous mutations that have been fixed in the human lineage (Table 2; Fig 1). Their ratio (16/6 = 2.67) is significantly greater than that for common polymorphisms ...The number of nonsynonymous substitutions unexplainable by neutral evolution is 16 - 3.75 = 12,...It is interesting that there is no significant excess of nonsynonymous substitutions for either the chimpanzee or orangutan branches when the common polymorphisms and substitutions are compared (P > 0.05). (Evolution of the Human ASPM Gene, a Major Determinant of Brain Size
Genetics, December 2003, Jianzhi Zhang Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109)​

So when you can't rely on relaxed functional constraint and purifying selection then what else is left?

Remember this is a comparison...

Amazing how the experts in this field find it entirely plausable yet for some reason we're asked to doubt their conclusions because... Mark finds it implausable.

Amazing that the experts after all is said and done go right back to their a priori assumption of a common ancestor calling it XXX selection...Deamiter thinks this is a conclusion rather then suppostion...simply amazing.

Just one real question here, what does the word positive in positive selection mean?

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[Deamiter]

Dang, the internet just ate my post!

Well, in short, positive selection is the increase of the frequency of an allele in a population.

I don't quite get what you're trying to claim -- certainly full functional relaxation doesn't explain the changes in the ASPM gene, but there are a number of methods scientists can use as evidence for the conclusion of evolution. Here's an abstract from an article you might consider reading.

Human Molecular Genetics Volume 13, Number 5 Pp. 489-494

A prominent trend in the evolution of humans is the progressive enlargement of the cerebral cortex. The ASPM (Abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated) gene has the potential to play a role in this evolutionary process, because mutations in this gene cause severe reductions in the cerebral cortical size of affected humans. Here, we show that the evolution of ASPM is significantly accelerated in great apes, especially along the ape lineages leading to humans. Additionally, the lineage from the last human/chimpanzee ancestor to humans shows an excess of non-synonymous over synonymous substitutions, which is a signature of positive Darwinian selection. A comparison of polymorphism and divergence using the McDonald-Kreitman test confirms that ASPM has indeed experienced intense positive selection during recent human evolution. This test also reveals that, on average, ASPM fixed one advantageous amino acid change in every 300,000-400,000 years since the human lineage diverged from chimpanzees some 5-6 million years ago. We therefore conclude that ASPM underwent strong adaptive evolution in the descent of Homo sapiens, which is consistent with its putative role in the evolutionary enlargement of the human brain.

 

[mark kennedy]

Dang, the internet just ate my post!

I hate that!

Well, in short, positive selection is the increase of the frequency of an allele in a population.

The word I was looking for was adaptive, in other words positive and adaptive evolution are the same thing. Positive selection is actually measured in genetics:

To assess the rate of evolution for each gene, we estimated KA, the number of coding base substitutions that result in amino acid change as a fraction of all such possible sites (the non-synonymous substitution rate). Because the background mutation rate varies across the genome, it is crucial to normalize KA for comparisons between genes. A striking illustration of this variation is the fact that the mean KA is 37% higher in the rapidly diverging distal 10 Mb of chromosomes than in the more proximal regions. Classically, the background rate is estimated by KS, the synonymous substitution rate (coding base substitutions that, because of codon redundancy, do not result in amino acid change). Because a typical gene has only a few synonymous changes between humans and chimpanzees, and not infrequently is zero, we exploited the genome sequence to estimate the local intergenic/intronic substitution rate, KI, where appropriate. KA and KS were also estimated for each lineage separately using mouse and rat as outgroups.(Chimpanzee Genome, Nature 2005)​

Did you catch that? It's a ratio. You are confusing the definition of evolution as the change of allele frequencies in populations over time.

I don't quite get what you're trying to claim -- certainly full functional relaxation doesn't explain the changes in the ASPM gene, but there are a number of methods scientists can use as evidence for the conclusion of evolution.

When comparing the ASPM gene in human populations the polymorphisms result in sever reduction in brain size. When comparing chimpanzee and other ape ASPM genes to have a direct comparison of sequences. What this will tell you is how many changes had to occur in order for the human brain to have evolved from the size of an ape's. Relaxed functional constraint is an unreasonable explanation since if mutations were allowed to accumulate with an effect that effect would be most often highly deleterious. The model the ASPM paper I quoted earlier is using is a neutral/slightly deleterious model leaving 16 alleles unaccounted for. This problem does not present itself when comparing apes.

One thing is crystal clear to me, the human brain is unique. Positive selection as an explanation is really nothing more then an assumption since the only other possibility has been rejected before actually looking at the evidence (a priori).

Here's an abstract from an article you might consider reading.

Human Molecular Genetics Volume 13, Number 5 Pp. 489-494

This comparison shows a significant excess of fixed nonsynonymous substitutions...It is interesting that there is no significant excess of nonsynonymous substitutions for either the chimpanzee or orangutan branches when the common polymorphisms and substitutions are compared​