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Creationists busily, and without respite, declare that evolution is wrong, and Genesis (apparently both I and II) are 100% true history.
There is, from a scientific/genetic viewpoint, a big problem - 2, actually - in believing this.
1. How to get today's extant (not to mention extinct) diversity from a single created pair of every animal (and presumably, plants).
Creationists (to include the 'professional' ones) generally ignore this issue altogether and focus on typically bogus attacks on evolution, but every now and then an intrepid one will put forth a proposal for how this degree of diversity can be 'explained' genetically via creation.
The more 'sophisticated' versions are along the lines of a 'fully front-loaded genome', in which the original created 'Kinds' (whatever those are) had created genomes that were jam-packed with all of the alleles that would be required to produce all of the later variants of these 'Kinds'. So, the original 'Elephant Kind' had a genome with the alleles needed to produce mastadons, mammoths, gomphotheres, etc,; the original 'Bat Kind' had all of the alleles required to produce the 1000 or so species of bat, etc.
I should note that I have encountered at least 2 people advocating for this on the internet, and have read about it as a possibility on several 'professional' creationist sites over the years. None have actually presented any actual evidence that this was so.
The evidence that we DO have indicates that this is simply impossible. How would, for example, the alleles that make a domestic cat be 'turned off' for the millenia (or, decades in the YEC timeline) before there were such felines? Advocates of the front-loaded genome never have answers.
Other attempts at rescuing the implausibility of Genesis' accuracy include positing things like hybridization as the all-purpose escape - new species are made via hybridization! Where, one often asks advocates of this, did the two 'kinds' that hybridized come from originally, since Genesis only mentions 'each after their kind', and we are told.... hybridization!
That is, there is no answer.
2. The other big problem for Genesis genetics is that the diversity somehow produced by the creation was wiped out - leaving but a single breeding pair of everything but humans and 'clean' beasts after the flood.
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.
Do creationists know of any evidence FOR how this diversity was produced?
And please remember that it MUST have been produced post-flood, too - otherwise, the ark would have been impossible.
There is, from a scientific/genetic viewpoint, a big problem - 2, actually - in believing this.
1. How to get today's extant (not to mention extinct) diversity from a single created pair of every animal (and presumably, plants).
Creationists (to include the 'professional' ones) generally ignore this issue altogether and focus on typically bogus attacks on evolution, but every now and then an intrepid one will put forth a proposal for how this degree of diversity can be 'explained' genetically via creation.
The more 'sophisticated' versions are along the lines of a 'fully front-loaded genome', in which the original created 'Kinds' (whatever those are) had created genomes that were jam-packed with all of the alleles that would be required to produce all of the later variants of these 'Kinds'. So, the original 'Elephant Kind' had a genome with the alleles needed to produce mastadons, mammoths, gomphotheres, etc,; the original 'Bat Kind' had all of the alleles required to produce the 1000 or so species of bat, etc.
I should note that I have encountered at least 2 people advocating for this on the internet, and have read about it as a possibility on several 'professional' creationist sites over the years. None have actually presented any actual evidence that this was so.
The evidence that we DO have indicates that this is simply impossible. How would, for example, the alleles that make a domestic cat be 'turned off' for the millenia (or, decades in the YEC timeline) before there were such felines? Advocates of the front-loaded genome never have answers.
Other attempts at rescuing the implausibility of Genesis' accuracy include positing things like hybridization as the all-purpose escape - new species are made via hybridization! Where, one often asks advocates of this, did the two 'kinds' that hybridized come from originally, since Genesis only mentions 'each after their kind', and we are told.... hybridization!
That is, there is no answer.
2. The other big problem for Genesis genetics is that the diversity somehow produced by the creation was wiped out - leaving but a single breeding pair of everything but humans and 'clean' beasts after the flood.
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.
Do creationists know of any evidence FOR how this diversity was produced?
And please remember that it MUST have been produced post-flood, too - otherwise, the ark would have been impossible.