Literal Genesis requires incest and would have created a threatened species

[Assyrian]

While I understand that some changes in an entire population can occur over long periods of time (especially if a population becomes isolated from others of their same kind), I don't subscribe to the belief that these slight changes over millions of years eventually accumulate into the birth a new kind of organism altogether. Yes, variations in organisms is directly observable. However, common ancestry between diverse types of organisms must be assumed. Similarities in organisms only strongly imply common ancestry when coupled with the presupposition of ontological naturalism.

It is strong evidence once you accept the reality and existence of the natural world, which after all is God's creation.

I say all this to get at the root problem here. Mutations are the Darwinianists only hope of generating new genetic information.

So changes in the genetic code are the only way to get a different genetic code? This is a problem?

Since mutations occur in individuals that are already adapted to their environment, virtually all mutations represent corruptions to the genetic information. Mutations, even if they were deemed beneficial, actually represent a loss of information because their original sequence has been damaged. Any gain is offset by loss.

You are assuming that adaptation is absolute, and that the environment they are adapted to is unchanging. Even if an organism is adapted to an environment, it doesn't mean it can't adapt better or find a different adaptation. Environments change too, changes in weather, food source, changes in proportion of different food sources or competition for the food sources, new competition, changes in plant cover leading to different nesting conditions and exposure to predators, new predators, new diseases. You mention populations becoming isolated, this is often because they have migrated into a new area with different conditions they need to adapt to.

Again, since natural selection is the primary mechanism that promotes changes in the number of particular traits in a population, we run into the same problem. Natural selection is basically a weeding out process. It does not create anything new, it only selects from what is present already and does so by a process of elimination.

Therefore, the major factors that influence the frequency of genes and traits in a population do so primarily through negative effects - the loss of genetic information and a decrease in the variation within a population.

So you have two mechanisms in operation, mutations which increase diversity, and natural selection which decrease it by weeding out anything not suited to the particular environment they live in at the time. First of course, natural selection weeds out the most harmful damaging mutations. But you get a build up of different genes that are either neutral in that environment or if slightly less beneficial for adaptation do not make a significant enough difference to be weeded out immediately. The result is an increase in diversity in the population. So when the environment changes or some migrate to a new environment, natural selection can select the best genes for that environment with its new food sources, new cover and new predators. There is much more scope for new mutations to fine turn the genome than in the old environment where genes had been already been selected fine tuned over millions of years.

My contention (stemming from a plain reading of Genesis) is that God supernaturally created mature organisms (of various specific kinds) and included tremendous genetic diversity in these from the beginning. As such, I hold that rather than new types organisms coming into existence over time, we are actually observing, for the most part, a loss and extinction of types of organisms.

We are observing loss and extinction because we are destroying habitats. But for genetic diversity you need a very large population, but if you believe the flood was global, each kind was reduced to just seven pairs, or only a single pair for unclean animals.

I see no problem with Adam and Eve being the sole ancestors of the entire human population.

With two people you have four set of chromosomes with only four possible versions of each gene. Yet if we look at genetic variations for HLA complex which codes for the immune system, the numbers of alleles keeps growing as we discover more and more genetic variations.
As of January we now know of
2,188 versions of the gene HLA-A
2,862 versions of HLA-B
1,746 versions of HLA-C
There are only
11 versions of HLA-E
22 versions of HLA-F
50 versions of HLA-G
Even the HLA-E gene has too many allelles to come from a pair of individuals while HLA-B would have needed 1,431 individuals to produce that diversity, and we are finding new alleles all the time.

 

[Aman777]

Sky:>>It's true that one can skew things around and get to that conclusion.

Dear Sky, No one is "skewing things around". It's God's Truth which also agrees with the discoveries of science and history.

Sky:>>But the scriptures were not written to be a puzzle.

UnScriptural, since scripture tells us in Proverbs 25:2: It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Scripture also tells us that people who have not been born spiritually cannot understand the Spiritual. It is foolishness to them. 1 Corinthians 2:14


People were very very tribal in those days and if that had happened, the stories would be loud and clear about cross-pollination. And I doubt they'd be peaceful stories like black sheep mating with white sheep.

Doesn't matter what people in those days thought since Scripture is authored by God. Falsely assuming that men authored the Bible means that one is following ancient mens views instead of God's.

 

[Fascinated With God]

Mutations are defects. Plain and simple.

You can look it up or I'll do it for you.

That is incorrect. Mutations sometime produce improvements. Witness how rapidly bacteria are evolving to become immune to antibiotics. That is the result of mutations that proved beneficial to the bacteria.

 

[Fascinated With God]

Since mutations occur in individuals that are already adapted to their environment, virtually all mutations represent corruptions to the genetic information. Mutations, even if they were deemed beneficial, actually represent a loss of information because their original sequence has been damaged. Any gain is offset by loss.

This is nothing but chicken feathers. There is no factual substance to anything you said here. There is no loss unless the mutation is deleterious. What you are saying is that a computer programmer making any change to his program is actually generating a loss. You logic makes no sense at all.

Again, since natural selection is the primary mechanism that promotes changes in the number of particular traits in a population, we run into the same problem. Natural selection is basically a weeding out process. It does not create anything new, it only selects from what is present already and does so by a process of elimination.

Mutations create the diversity, not natural selection. You are climbing up the wrong tree.

 

[Fascinated With God]

You are correct that I ignored your mild thoughts on disease. Disease is out of the question for the first few generations, if not the first millennia.

If you take the story at face value, then God's engineering did not include a shovel full of diseases dropped on top of all that He had made. That's silly.

You have not addressed the point in any way, you are still strategically ignoring an objection that you know that you can't answer.

If there was such a huge bottleneck 5,000 years ago there would be so little genetic diversity that we could all take organ donors from almost anyone. You completely ignored that point, very wise of you. Also with so little genetic diversity one virulent virus could easily wipe out the entire human race.

Why can't you addtress these issue instead of dodging them? Is it that deep down inside you are afriad to face the truth? People cling to their pet ideas like the ideas were God Himself.







.

 

[Fascinated With God]

Domestic dogs are considered the most diverse species on the planet
and we did that ourselves in a few thousand years, so your argument fails.

http://www.xolo.com/dogblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/J-Hered-1999-Vil%C3%A0-71-7.pdf

First of all, dogs come from no less than four different breeding stock: European wolf, Asian wolf, Arabian wolf and fox. So right from the start they had substantial genetic diversity and all dogs today carry DNA from at least three of these breeds. So your argument flops from the start.

But to make it worse you fail to understand that human selection is FAR more rapid than natural selection. A study done in Russia fifty years ago used extremely high selective pressures for taming foxes. Within 40 generations they had created a fox so tame that they showed a child handing an adult fox. They also got floppy ears and currly tails. So they were breed into a far more dog-like creature in virtually no time compared to the time frame of normal evolution.

So having a naturally large gene pool to start with, and then being subject to intensely rapid artificial selective pressures to create a diversity of breeds is the cause of their diversity.

Your point is moot.

 

[Jig]

With two people you have four set of chromosomes with only four possible versions of each gene. Yet if we look at genetic variations for HLA complex which codes for the immune system, the numbers of alleles keeps growing as we discover more and more genetic variations.
As of January we now know of
2,188 versions of the gene HLA-A
2,862 versions of HLA-B
1,746 versions of HLA-C
There are only
11 versions of HLA-E
22 versions of HLA-F
50 versions of HLA-G
Even the HLA-E gene has too many allelles to come from a pair of individuals while HLA-B would have needed 1,431 individuals to produce that diversity, and we are finding new alleles all the time.

I'm afraid that I am not well enough studied to go into a productive conversation on this topic, however, I am still able to search for information linked to this topic.

I found an article addressing a similar issue. Here is an interesting quote:

The mechanisms responsible for the large pools of alleles found within populations today are almost entirely theoretic. Following cell division, we simply can not determine whether mutations or recombination were responsible for any particular genetic alteration. But, since many alleles must have accumulated rapidly if the young earth position is correct a mechanism should be sought that is able to introduce these alterations in a controlled and systematic fashion. To this point, recent discoveries have shown that many genes are highly variable or polymorphic in comparison to others, and possess regions that change significantly from one generation to the next. Although changes to gene sequence are still commonly assumed the result of mutations, evidence has surfaced which is helping to demonstrate that new alleles are the result of purposeful genetic recombination.

 

[Assyrian]

I'm afraid that I am not well enough studied to go into a productive conversation on this topic, however, I am still able to search for information linked to this topic.

I found an article addressing a similar issue. Here is an interesting quote:

The mechanisms responsible for the large pools of alleles found within populations today are almost entirely theoretic. Following cell division, we simply can not determine whether mutations or recombination were responsible for any particular genetic alteration. But, since many alleles must have accumulated rapidly if the young earth position is correct a mechanism should be sought that is able to introduce these alterations in a controlled and systematic fashion. To this point, recent discoveries have shown that many genes are highly variable or polymorphic in comparison to others, and possess regions that change significantly from one generation to the next. Although changes to gene sequence are still commonly assumed the result of mutations, evidence has surfaced which is helping to demonstrate that new alleles are the result of purposeful genetic recombination.

There is another term for genetic recombination, it is genetic shuffling. It is very useful for clearing out harmful mutations, especially if each chromosome has a harmful mutation on that gene. A genetic shuffle can leave both mutations on one chromosome, which will be selected out even faster, while the other chromosome produced in the shuffle is clean. Of course if you already have two versions of the gene, it can produce novel versions and increases genetic diversity, just as mutations do changing a single amino in the protein. But while there are good genetic reason to shuffle, these shuffles are as random as mutations are.

The other problem with Ashcraft's claim can be seen in his use of 'commonly assumed'. As happens so often in creationist literature, 'assumed' mean based on very strong evidence. It is easy to see the family relationship between alleles. If two alleles differ by a single nucleotide, then you are looking at a SNP mutation, if the different alleles fit into a family tree with single point differences at each branch in the tree, then you are looking at genetic diversity through a series of mutations. Not only do you get that, the branches fit the geographic spread of different forms of the gene.

If the alleles were formed by recombination, you would still be able to form a clear family tree, but it would look very different, each new allele would have two clear parents instead of one, each parent contributing two clearly identifiable sections of the gene. The genealogy would still form a tree, but instead of be able to trace an allele back along a single branch as you get with single point mutations, with recombination the tree for a single allele would also branching out back through time, like a genealogy showing two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents.

 

[SkyWriting]

First of all, dogs come from no less than four different breeding stock: European wolf, Asian wolf, Arabian wolf and fox. So right from the start they had substantial genetic diversity and all dogs today carry DNA from at least three of these breeds. So your argument flops from the start.

But to make it worse you fail to understand that human selection is FAR more rapid than natural selection. A study done in Russia fifty years ago used extremely high selective pressures for taming foxes. Within 40 generations they had created a fox so tame that they showed a child handing an adult fox. They also got floppy ears and currly tails. So they were breed into a far more dog-like creature in virtually no time compared to the time frame of normal evolution.

So having a naturally large gene pool to start with, and then being subject to intensely rapid artificial selective pressures to create a diversity of breeds is the cause of their diversity.

Your point is moot.

You've proved my points on all counts. Thanks.

 

[SkyWriting]

You have not addressed the point in any way, you are still strategically ignoring an objection that you know that you can't answer.
If there was such a huge bottleneck 5,000 years ago there would be so little genetic diversity that we could all take organ donors from almost anyone. You completely ignored that point, very wise of you. Also with so little genetic diversity one virulent virus could easily wipe out the entire human race.

Why can't you addtress these issue instead of dodging them? Is it that deep down inside you are afriad to face the truth? People cling to their pet ideas like the ideas were God Himself.
.

From my view, you have no point. From my view all diversity was perfect at the start and has decayed until the present day where we can no longer exchange organs as we could have in the past.

People are not living longer because our DNA is improving. Adam did OK with "no diversity" at all.

 

[SkyWriting]

That is incorrect. Mutations sometime produce improvements. Witness how rapidly bacteria are evolving to become immune to antibiotics. That is the result of mutations that proved beneficial to the bacteria.

Those are populations of bacteria. You can't show that the resulting strains didn't already exist in the population even 100's of years before the creation of the medicine.

 

[Fascinated With God]

You've proved my points on all counts. Thanks.

Hardly. This was the original point you objected to, which you seem to have forgotten:

Starting from just a single breeding pair six thousand years ago, you could not possibly build up enough genetic diversity to account for the amount of genetic differences there are present in modern humans. By contrast cheetahs, who were reduced to approximately 6 individuals some 10,000 years ago, have so little genetic diversity that any cheetah today can be given a skin graft from any other cheetah without provoking an immune reaction.

Your argument that dog diversity somehow disproves that cheetahs had a sever bottleneck that humans have not, is utterly non-sequiter. Dog diversity does not in any way disprove it, it doesn't even say anything at all about the fact that cheetah diversity is the result of a bottleneck twice as far back in time as you claim there was a bottleneck for humans. Dogs come from *4* different widely divers *large* populations with no bottlenecks at all for any of these populations, but you claim that humans came from a single tiny group of just 3 pairs. So your comparison doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

Your response was extremely superficial, which is a reflection of your argument as a whole.







.

 

[Fascinated With God]

Those are populations of bacteria. You can't show that the resulting strains didn't already exist in the population even 100's of years before the creation of the medicine.

It is possible in a few cases, but extremely unlikely to be true in all cases. Are you attempting to argue that mutations do not occur?

 

[Fascinated With God]

From my view, you have no point. From my view all diversity was perfect at the start and has decayed until the present day where we can no longer exchange organs as we could have in the past.

There is no such thing as "perfect" diversity. Your understanding is severely lacking. That is like saying that someone's bank account is "perfect". It is an utterly subjective statement that demonstrates a sever lack of understanding about the subject you think you are addressing.

People are not living longer because our DNA is improving. Adam did OK with "no diversity" at all.

Having high or low diversity has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the individual genomes. You just can't seem to keep you mind on the subject at hand, which is gene pool diversity. Your lack of focus is very telling.

 

[SkyWriting]

There is no such thing as "perfect" diversity. Your understanding is severely lacking. That is like saying that someone's bank account is "perfect". It is an utterly subjective statement that demonstrates a sever lack of understanding about the subject you think you are addressing.

Having high or low diversity has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the individual genomes. You just can't seem to keep you mind on the subject at hand, which is gene pool diversity. Your lack of focus is very telling.

Do tell. Go tell it on the mountain.
There is no longer a perfectly engineered DNA system that keeps itself in constant stasis.
But there are well engineered structures that work hard to eliminate all mutations that
are outside of the engineered norms of operation.

"We now know that fewer than one in 1000 accidental base changes in DNA results
in a permanent mutation; the rest are eliminated with remarkable efficiency by DNA repair. "

 

[SkyWriting]

It is possible in a few cases, but extremely unlikely to be true in all cases. Are you attempting to argue that mutations do not occur?

It cannot be shown that they ever occur without a 100% sampling and documentation of each member of a population. Even then errors could be made and not every member fully documented. It's a young field, mistakes happen.

 

[SkyWriting]

Hardly. This was the original point you objected to, which you seem to have forgotten:

Your argument that dog diversity somehow disproves that cheetahs had a sever bottleneck that humans have not, is utterly non-sequiter. Dog diversity does not in any way disprove it, it doesn't even say anything at all about the fact that cheetah diversity is the result of a bottleneck twice as far back in time as you claim there was a bottleneck for humans. Dogs come from *4* different widely divers *large* populations with no bottlenecks at all for any of these populations, but you claim that humans came from a single tiny group of just 3 pairs. So your comparison doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.

Your response was ex..<snip>.

All humans came from 1 pair of humans. Domestic dog diversity shows that diversity is built into DNA and no mutations are required. For the very same reason, no more than 1 pair of perfectly designed humans were needed.

 

[SkyWriting]

Sky:>>It's true that one can skew things around and get to that conclusion.

Dear Sky, No one is "skewing things around". It's God's Truth which also
agrees with the discoveries of science and history.

Not really. When Jesus turned water into wine, a scientist/wine expert
concluded that the wine was well aged and perfect. And only minutes
after Jesus produced it. So you see, the Bible explains that
"science experts" will be wrong on some matters.

"New Living Translation (©2007)
"A host always serves the best wine first," he said. "Then, when everyone
has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine. But you have
kept the best until now!"

I think we can agree that the wine made minutes before would normally
be the the less expensive wine saved for drunks.

 

[SkyWriting]

Mutations aren't "defects". If anything, when breeding a very small population, you'd want a lot of mutations to increase genetic diversity and avoid pairing negative recessives.

Lets get back to your original mistake:

"If the changes in a genome are restricted to a single gene, a single- gene defect ensues."
Single gene defect or mutation

Frog mutations and genetic defects - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancestral Mutation in Telomerase Causes Defects

 

[Fascinated With God]

All humans came from 1 pair of humans. Domestic dog diversity shows that diversity is built into DNA and no mutations are required. For the very same reason, no more than 1 pair of perfectly designed humans were needed.

Your statement doesn't make any sense and you don't even seem to understand the nature of the problem scientifically. So you continue to fail to see that your evidence on dogs isn't even remotely related to the issue.

I'll make one last try at explaining this to you before I throw my hands up. Cheetahs have a genetic bottleneck twice as far back, and of precisely the same numbers, as the bottleneck that you propose 5,000 years ago for humans. So if your theory is correct it would predict that humans would be even more susceptible to pandemic extinction than cheetahs and have even more ability to freely transplant organs without invoking an immune response. Neither of these predictions hold true, so clearly your theory holds no water.