Impreccable proof for the Biblical Flood

[MacNeil, D.]

And now you'll feel like a true researcher! You've created a hypothesis (a well thought out one I may add) and now you're searching for data and studies to back up your hypothesis.

I'm hoping this might ignite your passion for inquiry

quote mining google is not doing science.

 

[rjc34]

quote mining google is not doing science.

I'm hoping this will allow him to discover himself how the evidence does not in any way support his conclusion and leads him to a life in inquiry.

 

[Blayz]

And now you'll feel like a true researcher! You've created a hypothesis (a well thought out one I may add) and now you're searching for data and studies to back up your hypothesis.

I'm hoping this might ignite your passion for inquiry

I concur. It is a well thought out hypothesis, one that can be supported or falsified by the evidence.

Just a couple of things:

Furthermore, we know that the mitochondrial DNA is almost exclusively passed on only from mother to child, and the Y chromosome almost exclusively from father to son

You don't need the "almost", the inheritance you describe always happens that way.

The odds that billions of specific predictions just happen to be true

...can be determined with the right statistics. There is no need for some kind of subjective guess.

OK, now is my question: Has anyone actually gathered the data to verify these predictions?

Yes they have, but you should find this for yourself rather than having it parroted here.

But genetic inheritance is simple enough that anyone who went to high school should understand it, or it could be learned in a few minutes.

I have a PhD and 20 years research experience that has involved studying genetic inheritance, and I am far from an expert in it. It is far from simple, far from something high school education is enough for, and far from something that can be learned in a few minutes. Here's some wiki links that will get you started

Hardy–Weinberg principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Genetic drift - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gene flow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linkage disequilibrium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[plindboe]

Thanks! I was beginning to think this place was full of people who substitute derisiveness for substance, but now I know where to find my answers. I'd only recently added the word bottleneck as the description for the restricted genes, which is why I hadn't yet searched via that term. I'd been trying to count alleles that had been found but kept finding way too much random stuff, and then more troubles accounting for the new ones 4,300 years of mutation would add.

But if I'm not mistaken the bottleneck studies should account for all the data I was looking for (alleles, mutation, and time since), and done by someone who knows what they're doing and has access to the raw data. I'll go look around and come back when I find evidence one way or the other. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

I agree that the early respondents were a bit short with you and a bit rude, which often happens around here, but there are many knowledgable people here too, including several biologists (even a couple of christian evolutionary biologists), and there're many goodies to learn.

I'm studying for my master's in biology and I've encountered various papers on bottlenecks throughout my studies, and I haven't found anything that would indicate that your hypothesis is true; quite the contrary in fact. It's admirable that you come up with a testable hypothesis though and draw predictions from it. That's how science is done!

It's not the entirety of science though. Adjusting to the evidence, instead of getting too enamoured with a hypothesis, is often the next step.

Peter

 

[AV1611VET]

I'm studying for my master's in biology...

Just out of curiosity, what is the paradigm on angiosperms?

Did the grasses arrive via punctuated equilibrium?

And good luck with your master's!

 

[MacNeil, D.]

I'm hoping this will allow him to discover himself how the evidence does not in any way support his conclusion and leads him to a life in inquiry.

do you honestly think that the OP knows what falsifiability is? or how to frame a theory that could be falsified, or -- most important -- could even accept proof that the world isn't a few thousand years old?

 

[MacNeil, D.]

I agree that the early respondents were a bit short with you and a bit rude, ...

that is because of the disconnect between the thread title, claiming to have proof, and the end of his screed, asking if any one has evidence to support him.

 

[Split Rock]

Hi Chris!

Hi, this is my first post here, and I joined because I believe I have some impeccable proof for the Biblical Flood as described in Genesis 7.

By summing geneaologies we know almost exactly when the flood happened:
We also know that at this point all the various species were wiped out except the aquatic ones and those that were on the ark. But can we prove it? Of course! The flood story makes a very specific, and very unlikely prediction: 4,300 years ago, there was a global genetic bottleneck in all species with the following specific criteria:

for aquatic species, no bottleneck.
for clean animals and birds, a bottleneck of population down to 7 males and 7 females
for the rest of the animals, a bottleneck down to 1 male and 1 female.

Furthermore, we know that the mitochondrial DNA is almost exclusively passed on only from mother to child, and the Y chromosome almost exclusively from father to son -- so there is one per pair. (the almost because I'm not completely sure of that). Finally, for diploid species we know the number of alleles is 2 alleles per individual, for each of the thousands of genes there are.

Per the biblical account, this limits the number of different alleles to at most the numbers in the above paragraph. Next, why this should be considered impeccable proof. Consider now the amount of species there are: estimates range from about 2-100 million species (less if we limit this to Kinds, but I don't know the numbers for that). Earlier I said the predictions described would be extremely unlikely. Now to put a number to this: consider the number of species, and the number of genes each species has on average. Multiply those two numbers together and you get the number of individual predictions made by the account of the biblical flood. That number would be at least 2 million species * 1,000 genes per species = 2 billion predictions. Each of those genes has to follow the pattern as described above.

Furthermore, by using a genetic clock (we count the corruption rate of DNA, and the total number of corruptions in the DNA), we can calculate a timeline for the genetic bottleneck. Each of the timelines should give the same number: the bottleneck occurred 4,300 years ago. That, then, is about 2 billion additional predictions. And these few billion predictions are even more specific than the previous ones.

Now about what I said about the predictions being extremely unlikely. Per the above, we can make billions of very specific predictions. The odds that billions of specific predictions just happen to be true (ie, were they random predictions) is pretty much impossible. Therefore, when such predictions are verified we can say with absolute certainty that it was not just a "lucky guess", no more than anyone could credibly say that guessing a billion digit number was just a "lucky guess". (This of course is how certainty in a scientific theory is calculated; the odds that your prediction was a "lucky guess" is the odds that the data does not support your theory). Given the impossibility of the predictions being explained by a "lucky guess", this translates to impeccable proof -- if the predictions can be verified.

OK, now is my question: Has anyone actually gathered the data to verify these predictions? If so, could you give a link to it? I'd dearly love to have something that directly supports a biblical creation to show my evolutionist friends, instead of arguing incessantly about holes in the evolutionary theory. Or, if no one has gathered this data, why not?

This is a very good hypothesis on your part. Are you prepared if it fails, however? I can come up with some evidence that falsifies it right now. The HLA gene complex in humans is involved in tissue compatability and rejection. HLA-B - major histocompatibility complex, class I, B - Genetics Home Reference There are literally hundreds or thousands of alleles of some of these gene loci. Human leukocyte antigen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is not compatatble with a scenario where two humans gave rise (or Noah's family) to the entire human race after a few thousand years.

 

[Split Rock]

Thanks! I was beginning to think this place was full of people who substitute derisiveness for substance, but now I know where to find my answers. I'd only recently added the word bottleneck as the description for the restricted genes, which is why I hadn't yet searched via that term. I'd been trying to count alleles that had been found but kept finding way too much random stuff, and then more troubles accounting for the new ones 4,300 years of mutation would add.

But if I'm not mistaken the bottleneck studies should account for all the data I was looking for (alleles, mutation, and time since), and done by someone who knows what they're doing and has access to the raw data. I'll go look around and come back when I find evidence one way or the other. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

I don't approve of the tone of some of the responses to your O.P. I think one issue is that the title is misleading. You are looking for the evidence, not presenting it. Other than that, the O.P. is well thought out.

 

[chris4243]

quote mining google is not doing science.

And slander is neither a clever nor substantiative response. Doing science is making testable hypotheses and verifying their predictions, which is exactly what I have done. Quote mining is taking quotes out of context. Now, you big liar, what quotes am I taking out of context?

do you honestly think that the OP knows what falsifiability is?

Had you the ability to form and recognize falsifiable hypotheses, you'd know the answer to that question upon reading the OP.

Furthermore, we know that the mitochondrial DNA is almost exclusively passed on only from mother to child, and the Y chromosome almost exclusively from father to son

You don't need the "almost", the inheritance you describe always happens that way.

Well pardon me if I don't take your word for it, PhD or no.
en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Paternal_mtDNA_transmission
jhered. oxfordjournals. org/ content/ 81 /1/ 66. short

It wouldn't surprise me if some strange combination of Kleinfelter's syndrome, androgen insensitivity syndrome, and/or male/female chimerism might result in a prototypical female with a Y chromosome, though if you define maleness as the presence of the Y chromosome that would be trivially true.

I have a PhD and 20 years research experience that has involved studying genetic inheritance, and I am far from an expert in it. It is far from simple, far from something high school education is enough for, and far from something that can be learned in a few minutes. Here's some wiki links that will get you started

I meant that anyone should be able to understand how a child's genes came from its parents (plus recombination and any mutations). Of course if you add in differential survival and reproduction and interactions between a gene and other genes in the self or in different organisms things get more complicated very quickly (probably NP complete or worse).

 

[Hespera]

And slander is neither a clever nor substantiative response. Doing science is making testable hypotheses and verifying their predictions, which is exactly what I have done. Quote mining is taking quotes out of context. Now, you big liar, what quotes am I taking out of context?



Had you the ability to form and recognize falsifiable hypotheses, you'd know the answer to that question upon reading the OP.

.

The bolded stuff says more than I can readily add to it.

Something you may not have thought about is that your project would take a great deal of difficult work to test. And at the end of it, you would have some data points that would not prove there was a flood.

No hypothesis can be proven, no theory can be proven. I wonder why you ever propose such a thing.

However, the hypothesis that there was a flood has been falsified so many times, ways and so thoroughly that you might look into that a bit, and save yourself some time.

 

[DrkSdBls]

Of course the data exist. You should know very well that DNA exists. Or are you saying no one has gone and counted the alleles? That the data is out there and no one bothered to check? This would be a great surprise to me because it would be a topic of interest to all biologists, regardless of their beliefs about creation/evolution.

The data has to exist. What I want to know is whether anyone gathered it, and whether anyone analyzed it to check the prediction I made. If not, someone should.

This post makes me call Poe..... Or Troll.

 

[chris4243]

Hi Chris!

This is a very good hypothesis on your part. Are you prepared if it fails, however? I can come up with some evidence that falsifies it right now. The HLA gene complex in humans is involved in tissue compatability and rejection. HLA-B - major histocompatibility complex, class I, B - Genetics Home Reference There are literally hundreds or thousands of alleles of some of these gene loci. Human leukocyte antigen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is not compatatble with a scenario where two humans gave rise (or Noah's family) to the entire human race after a few thousand years.

These run into some of the problems that I mentioned I had when trying to count alleles, since mutation can create new alleles since then. This is especially true in genes related to immune system, as these can change very rapidly (and unlike most genes even have replacement mutations being more common than silent mutations). So far I'm going with blindpoe's idea to search for bottleneck studies (since these will necessarily have to account for the number of new alleles arising via mutations since the bottleneck).

So far, 100% of the genetic bottlenecks I've found do not match the predictions in the OP in either timeline or population size (usually both). Furthermore, I've found that, as I suspected, I was not the first to consider that the biblical flood would result in testable predictions concerning genetic bottlenecks. However, all such examples I found were on anti-creationist websites.

Dating the genetic bottleneck of the African cheetah

The timing of a bottleneck is difficult to assess, but certain aspects of the cheetah's natural history suggest it may have occurred near the end of the last ice age (late Pleistocene, approximately 10,000 years ago), when a remarkable extinction of large vertebrates occurred on several continents.

This was one of the examples, and also it seems I'm not the only one who has a little trouble with the counting of alleles to find a bottleneck. The estimates range from hundreds of years to tens of thousands and some mention of millions. However, the possibility of the more recent bottleneck requires the survival of more than one mtDNA which would be extremely unlikely per the flood story (since cheetah is not clean).


I suppose the next step (for numerical estimate) is to see how far into the uncertainty range the OP predictions are in each of the bottleneck studies. Or, just whether the prediction lies outside the 95% confidence interval and "waste" some of the uncertainty estimate. However, I'm not sure how to add them up.

Also, there seem to be "surprisingly few" studies showing population bottlenecks. That should count for something but I don't know how to put a number to it.

Anyways, so far I can say that the OP hypothesis has ~5% chance of being consistent with the data. Ideally I'd like to find a way to get a more exact estimate, say to less than the odds of winning a lottery ticket. Alternately, the OP hypothesis could be greatly improved by replacing it with a coin.

 

[chris4243]

This post makes me call Poe..... Or Troll.

Thanks. blindpoe was very helpful, but he already posted. Or is there some different poe?

 

[rjc34]

...

I think the issue is just that you claimed one thing in the title, and then you go on to actual science in the OP...

It's been said by a couple people here though, are you ready to accept a conclusion that falsifies your hypothesis? Or do you have a predefined conclusion (that the ark story is true) and you're simply looking to support it somehow?

I definitely like what I'm seeing in you with an inquisitive mind, but you may be better off researching things like the age of the earth, and other, more direct evidence for a flood. I'd advise however that you stay far away from biased creation websites like AiG and CRI. These sites are filled with false statements, straw men and pseudoscience.

 

[DrkSdBls]

Thanks. blindpoe was very helpful, but he already posted. Or is there some different poe?

.....Now I'm sure of it.....

 

[freezerman2000]

The "genetic bottleneck" has been attributed to Toba...A super volcano in the area of Indonesia, and it happened well before four thousand years ago...
I just wanted to let you know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

 

[rjc34]

So far, 100% of the genetic bottlenecks I've found do not match the predictions in the OP in either timeline or population size (usually both).

Well for your hypothesis to be true, your findings would have to be the polar opposite. Especially if you're looking at key 'kinds' or whatever you guys call species, not having a bottleneck is a severe blow to your hypothesis. (I'm not trying to discourage you, just stating facts)

Furthermore, I've found that, as I suspected, I was not the first to consider that the biblical flood would result in testable predictions concerning genetic bottlenecks. However, all such examples I found were on anti-creationist websites.

So...science websites? You're trying to fit data that has already been concluded to fit an old earth of natural origins, into a young created earth. Round hole, square peg. I definitely encourage you to see this exercise through, but you have to realize the conclusions are pretty much non-contested facts now.

I suppose the next step (for numerical estimate) is to see how far into the uncertainty range the OP predictions are in each of the bottleneck studies. Or, just whether the prediction lies outside the 95% confidence interval and "waste" some of the uncertainty estimate. However, I'm not sure how to add them up.

Your knowledge of the scientific method continues to impress me.

Anyways, so far I can say that the OP hypothesis has ~5% chance of being consistent with the data. Ideally I'd like to find a way to get a more exact estimate, say to less than the odds of winning a lottery ticket. Alternately, the OP hypothesis could be greatly improved by replacing it with a coin.

I hate to rain on your parade, but the likeliness of the data lining up with your hypothesis literally is like the likeliness of winning the state lottery. Twice. In the same month.

How would you feel about us suggesting a different topic for you to research and conclude on after you finish with this one?

 

[rjc34]

.....Now I'm sure of it.....

He's new, he probably doesn't even know what a Poe is...

Or maybe I'm just naive.

 

[freezerman2000]

I'm in the localized flooding camp