- May 5, 2017
- 5,611
- 3,999
- 56
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Married
I started a thread on this a few months ago, which almost immediately became an unsupported-assertion dump, and got nowhere.
Perhaps I broached too many issues? It was only 2, really, but still...
So, I will attempt to rekindle the initial 'debate' but only bring up 1 issue:
Background*: All living things were Created by God no more than 10,000 years ago. These original creationists were not necessarily the same creatures we see today, but were the original 'Created Kind' - the Dog-Kind, Elephant-Kind, Pig-Kind, etc. These original Kinds were imbued with all of the genetic diversity they would need to eventually give rise to a lot of diversity - the original Elephant-Kind giving rise to mammoths, Indian and African elephants, gomphotheres, etc. The bat-Kind giving rise to the 1000+ species alive today (or at least a sampling of them), etc.
The original Kinds had all of the alleles needed to produce these 'sub-Kinds. At some point, for no apparent reason, the Original Kinds produced offspring that were these other sub-Kinds. What happened to the alleles that were no longer needed?** They were lost - a more specific organism has less genetic information than a more generic Original Kind.
And then came the Flood.
Problem: The diversity somehow produced by the original creation was wiped out - leaving but a single breeding pair of everything but humans and 'clean' beasts after the flood. There is no biblical instruction as to which Kinds were brought on the ark - was it the Original Kind pairs? Don't know.
This brings us back to square one - this is all usually ignored, or the original wiped-out diversity is ignored to focus on the re-generation of diversity post-flood as if that lessens the problem in some way.
The Genesis genetics problems are compounded by those that insist that there were no mutations before the Fall, or that mutations play no role in diversity, etc.
So, creationists, HOW did today's diversity arise from a pair or a few pairs since the Flood (which, for YECs, means that all of this diversity has to be explained as having occurred in only a few thousand years with nobody noticing)?
Hybridization does not cut it, for that implies the existence of more than a single breeding pair in the first place.
Front-loaded genomes could cut it, if only there was actual evidence for this, and only if what we actually know about genetics didn't actually refute it.
Discuss.
*This background is pieced together from what I have read on the internet by advocates of these various claims.
**I have been told by creationists more than a dozen times over the years that a specific taxon - a species - has less "genetic information" than that from which they arose (not evolved, of course). Which is odd, since many of those same creationists, when discussing other issues, claim that an enzyme whose gene mutated to allow the enzyme to accommodate more than one substrate has also 'lost' information...
Perhaps I broached too many issues? It was only 2, really, but still...
So, I will attempt to rekindle the initial 'debate' but only bring up 1 issue:
Background*: All living things were Created by God no more than 10,000 years ago. These original creationists were not necessarily the same creatures we see today, but were the original 'Created Kind' - the Dog-Kind, Elephant-Kind, Pig-Kind, etc. These original Kinds were imbued with all of the genetic diversity they would need to eventually give rise to a lot of diversity - the original Elephant-Kind giving rise to mammoths, Indian and African elephants, gomphotheres, etc. The bat-Kind giving rise to the 1000+ species alive today (or at least a sampling of them), etc.
The original Kinds had all of the alleles needed to produce these 'sub-Kinds. At some point, for no apparent reason, the Original Kinds produced offspring that were these other sub-Kinds. What happened to the alleles that were no longer needed?** They were lost - a more specific organism has less genetic information than a more generic Original Kind.
And then came the Flood.
Problem: The diversity somehow produced by the original creation was wiped out - leaving but a single breeding pair of everything but humans and 'clean' beasts after the flood. There is no biblical instruction as to which Kinds were brought on the ark - was it the Original Kind pairs? Don't know.
This brings us back to square one - this is all usually ignored, or the original wiped-out diversity is ignored to focus on the re-generation of diversity post-flood as if that lessens the problem in some way.
The Genesis genetics problems are compounded by those that insist that there were no mutations before the Fall, or that mutations play no role in diversity, etc.
So, creationists, HOW did today's diversity arise from a pair or a few pairs since the Flood (which, for YECs, means that all of this diversity has to be explained as having occurred in only a few thousand years with nobody noticing)?
Hybridization does not cut it, for that implies the existence of more than a single breeding pair in the first place.
Front-loaded genomes could cut it, if only there was actual evidence for this, and only if what we actually know about genetics didn't actually refute it.
Discuss.
*This background is pieced together from what I have read on the internet by advocates of these various claims.
**I have been told by creationists more than a dozen times over the years that a specific taxon - a species - has less "genetic information" than that from which they arose (not evolved, of course). Which is odd, since many of those same creationists, when discussing other issues, claim that an enzyme whose gene mutated to allow the enzyme to accommodate more than one substrate has also 'lost' information...