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I would distinguish between the historical existence of the person and the historical accuracy of stories about that person.
I have no problem with Abraham being a real, historical person, but I expect many of the stories we have about him are more legend than history. I don't think its a matter of mistakes. Just that stories were the way people remembered history for thousands of years, and stories tend to get molded into legends over time. So by the time they are put into writing, it's virtually impossible to separate actual history from legendary story elements. Indeed, in the cultural atmosphere of ancient Israel, no such distinction would be made.
You seem to think I am saying pain is a problem for the theory of evolution? I am not. I am saying it is a problem for how Christianity understands the theory of evolution.
Hi Papias,
Very good, but none of that applies from Adam to Abram.
Hi Solarwave,
So let me get this straight. You don't believe the account of the creation is true. You don't believe the geneologies are true. You don't believe (from previous discussions) that the worldwide flood is true. You don't believe the sun standing still in the heavens nearly an entire day is true. Maybe the list would be much shorter if you were to just tell us what you do believe to be true in the Scriptures.
God bless you.
In Christ, Ted
Usually they are talking about the calender or the clock they are using. It could be that they have a sun dial that works 365 days a year, but one day a year it will act different from the way it usually does. A lot of people going back to stonehedge had monuments set up so they could keep track of the days and the seasons.You don't believe the sun standing still in the heavens nearly an entire day is true.
Hi Solarwave,
So let me get this straight. You don't believe the account of the creation is true. You don't believe the geneologies are true. You don't believe (from previous discussions) that the worldwide flood is true. You don't believe the sun standing still in the heavens nearly an entire day is true. Maybe the list would be much shorter if you were to just tell us what you do believe to be true in the Scriptures.
God bless you.
In Christ, Ted
Hi Papias,
Very good, but none of that applies from Adam to Abram.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh I see I see said the blind man. Thank you for the correction. And yes I could see that. I retract my earlier unnecessary statements lol.
So, Theistic evolutionists, who is Adam? and why is Eve the mother of all living humans - how is it one female human is the mother of all if we evolved from Apes?
Well, let's start here.
Mitochondrial Eve - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also note that this is not the Eve of the bible. Mitochondrial Eve would be one of Eve's descendants.
Ahh the African Eve, A woman of no importance
Born in 1987 as evolutions attempt to provide a politically correct non-racist human evolution model.
This African eve has no relationship to the biblical Eve of Genesis 2 and 3
The theory postulates there were many migrations out of Africa prior to the African Eve. (Being more primitive humans)
These modern humans then migrated out of Africa about 100k-150k y ago eliminating all (Mass murder and genocide) other humans including Homo Erectus.
While the African Eve model seemed to be rather brilliantly conceived the Berkley Chemists made reasonable but unprovable assumptions.
They first assumed no mixing from generation to generation, - unchanged Chromosomes of Mitochondria from mother to offspring (This assumption has recently experienced a serious challenge and may in fact be false)
They then assumed that all changes in the mtDNA were the result of mutation over time at a constant rate.
On the basis of these assumptions the researchers believed they had access to a "molecular clock".
Unfortunately there was a serpent stalking this Eve, as there was in the originalThe researchers used a computer program designed to reveal a maximum parsimony phylogeny based on the assumption that evolution would have taken the most direct and efficient path - a rather strange assumption even for an evolutionist .
They did not know that the result of their single computer run was biased by the order in which the data were entered, others have determinined that with thousands of computer runs and with the data entered in different random orders an African origin for modern humans is not preferred.
Henry Gee from the editorial staff of Nature describes the results of the mtDNA study as "garbage" He states that considering the number of items involved (136 mtDNA sequences) the number of maximally parsimonious trees exceeds one billion.
Mark Stoneking (one of the original researchers) acknowledges that the African Eve has been invalidated
As I said, so I am glad that is clear. But then I wonder about your original question.
Right, but many of those other human lines are extinct or at least not represented in all modern humans (possibly in some, but not in all).
Why do you assume mass murder and genocide? Those are not needed for the extinction of other species. It is true, as a matter of history, that humans have committed mass murder and genocide, but it is not in any way necessary to evolution and ought not to be assumed without evidence.
That's interesting. What mechanism is proposed for mixing one woman's mitochondria with another so that a child gets a mixed heritage of mitochondrial DNA?
I have heard of some questioning of the molecular clock. However, it doesn't change the basic premise---only the actual placement in time of Mitochondrial Eve.
I don't think that is an assumption. But it is a matter of scientific preference to give greater weight to a more parsimonious tree. After all, if one evolutionary transition is deemed improbable, the likelihood that it happened more than once is even more improbable as the necessary factors combining again to produce it is highly improbable.
But sometimes the most parsimonious tree may not be the correct one. That issue is raised, for example, by Ardipithecus. If Ardipithecus is a common ancestor of Australopithecus and Pan (chimpanzee), then chimpanzees must have evolved knuckle-walking separately from gorillas instead of both inheriting this trait from the same common ancestor.
[/QUOTE]Invalidated in what sense? That there is no Mitochondrial Eve? That Mitochondrial Eve is not African? Or that the data does not give a valid reference point as to when she lived?
This alongside the mtEve model contradicting the fossil record, it does beg the question, what is reliable, DNA or fossils, if it's DNA the fossil recored is all up the treeif it's fossils DNA as a model is all up the tree or if it's neither as the creation position is then the flood and the fall is the only plausible model for dispersed buried fossils alongside the confusing results of mtDNA based on Chimps because we never evolved from chimps.
False dichotomy. It's not an either/or choice. Understanding changes, yes, but that doesn't mean everything is thrown out.
That was why I asked it
A number of reasons really, The way proposed natural selection by evolutionists requires that the wolf catches the sheep with short legs, the more advanced takes advantage over the less advantaged and kills them off in order to improve their survival rate.
A more advanced hominid encountering less advanced hominids and competing for food etc would result in wars where the more advanced killed off the less advanced.
To prevent mixing of DNA (men breeding with lower hominid woman) thus utterly destroying the mtEve model all the while passing on more advanced hominid genes because Eve was after the previous Hominid distributions according to the model, advanced hominid populations had to kill off less advanced without interbreeding. A peaceable accord between advanced and sub hominid populations would have inevitably resulted in interbreeding.
The abundance of food could not have caused environmental starvation of older hominid populations when newer ones came through.
New Disease could account for some older hominid deaths but not all
If older hominid are allowed to continue along the evolutionary path one could rightfully assume they would be around today in some hominid form.
Unless of course they were all wiped out by a catastrophe like a global flood
I said no mixing was a reasonable but not a proveable hypothesis. However
As above, if modern hominid male bred with woman lower hominid thus introducing the lower woman hominid mtDNA into the upper hominid population and this was then transmitted through populations at what point this could have happened no-one knows so for all the theory postulates it could have happened at any point in history thus negating the mtEve model.
The mtDNA study of African Eve, as well as other aspects of molecular genetics, deals with mutations in the DNA nucleotides. Perhaps we could be forgiven for asking: "When an evolutionist looks at human DNA nucleotides, how does he know which ones are the result of mutations and which ones have remained unchanged?" Obviously, to answer that question he must know what the original or ancient sequences were.
Since only God is omniscient, how does the evolutionist get the information regarding those sequences which he believes existed millions of years ago? He uses as his guide the DNA of the chimpanzee. In other words, the studies that seek to prove that human DNA evolved from chimp DNA start with the assumption that chimp DNA represents the original condition (or close to it) from which human DNA diverged.
The real mtEve in fact could be any time in history given scientists in reality don't know what she started with as mtDNA, they just assume it was Ape and as such analogous of today.
I also understand that the model presents that African mtDNA is more mutated than non African mtDNA, however this is still based on circular reasoning where by they are using Ape mtDNA as the reference point. This means she could have come from anywhere.
Where else in science is it an allowable procedure to assume your conclusions in order to backup your conclusions and in fact model your entire model upon these assumed conclusions?
This alongside the mtEve model contradicting the fossil record, it does beg the question, what is reliable, DNA or fossils, if it's DNA the fossil recored is all up the treeif it's fossils DNA as a model is all up the tree
because we never evolved from chimps.
That was why I asked it
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Well, what makes MtEve the mother of us all, wherever or whenever she existed, is that her genes have been inherited by all of us. Why would the same answer not work for the original Eve?
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A number of reasons really, The way proposed natural selection by evolutionists requires that the wolf catches the sheep with short legs, the more advanced takes advantage over the less advantaged and kills them off in order to improve their survival rate.
A more advanced hominid encountering less advanced hominids and competing for food etc would result in wars where the more advanced killed off the less advanced.
---End Quote---
Several problems with this. First, the wolf-sheep scenario only works when there is a predator-prey relationship. But in a predator-prey relationship, usually the predator and prey are of different species. Humans have hunted some prey to extinction or near extinction (mammoths, moas), but except in some instances of cannabalism, they have not systematically preyed on other humans. Also the wolf is not competing with the sheep, but with other predators, especially other wolves. But he doesn't attack other wolves to do that.
Further, predator-prey is not the only relationship among species. In fact, it is largely limited to animals, but evolution applies to all forms of life. Militant interactions are not features of the evolution of trees or yeasts. So they are not necessary to phasing out one species in favour of another. It is true that competition over food might cause violent conflict, but extinction does not imply that a species was starved out.
The basic misconception here is that the replacement of one species by another requires some sort of conflict and suffering inflicted on one by the other. It does not. The transition need not involve any violence or suffering at all.
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A number of reasons really, The way proposed natural selection by evolutionists requires that the wolf catches the sheep with short legs, the more advanced takes advantage over the less advantaged and kills them off in order to improve their survival rate.
A more advanced hominid encountering less advanced hominids and competing for food etc would result in wars where the more advanced killed off the less advanced.
---End Quote---
Did you get the "trees not ladders" diagram I posted earlier? The whole concept of "higher" "lower" "more or less advanced" "sub-human" etc. just has no place in evolutionary thinking.
In any case, H. sapiens men breeding with other hominid females would not destroy the MtEve model. Since, by definition, she is not the first woman, she could still be a woman in Africa about 60,000 years ago. (or any other time and place the evidence supports).
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I said no mixing was a reasonable but not a proveable hypothesis. However
As above, if modern hominid male bred with woman lower hominid thus introducing the lower woman hominid mtDNA into the upper hominid population and this was then transmitted through populations at what point this could have happened no-one knows so for all the theory postulates it could have happened at any point in history thus negating the mtEve model.
---End Quote---
If we were talking about nuclear DNA that might be correct (except for the nonsense about "lower" hominids), but we are talking about mitochondrial DNA. mtDNA is passed on uniquely through the female line. So if an H.sapiens man had children by a non-sapiens woman, all her children would have her non-sapiens mtDNA. None of it would be mixed with his. Her sons would not pass it on to any of their children; their children would get their mtDNA from their mates. Her daughters would pass it on to all their children. So you would be able in every generation to distinguish the non-sapiens mtDNA from the sapiens DNA.
Now, all the evidence for interbreeding among sapiens and non-sapiens hominids (sapiens and neanderthalensis) that I have heard of involves only nuclear DNA. When studies were made of mtDNA the sapiens and neanderthal mtDNA were different enough that for a while it was thought there had never been interbreeding between the two species. We do not have, so far as is known, any human mtDNA lineage derived from non-sapiens sources.
And the mtEve model is based only on mtDNA lineages, not the complete human genome.
---Quote---
The mtDNA study of African Eve, as well as other aspects of molecular genetics, deals with mutations in the DNA nucleotides. Perhaps we could be forgiven for asking: "When an evolutionist looks at human DNA nucleotides, how does he know which ones are the result of mutations and which ones have remained unchanged?" Obviously, to answer that question he must know what the original or ancient sequences were.
---End Quote---
Well, the actual question the geneticist poses is "in which lineage did the mutation occur?" Since they are working on the assumption that the species being studied did have a common ancestor, any difference between the two species is mutation. But since mutations have been accumulating in both groups, it is not immediately obvious which is the original and which is the changed sequence. If one finds a stretch of DNA in one lineage which does not exist in the other, does that mean it was added to one genome or lost from the other? As you say, we don't actually have the original ancestral genome to compare them with.
So it is an interesting puzzle, but not a hopeless one.
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Since only God is omniscient, how does the evolutionist get the information regarding those sequences which he believes existed millions of years ago? He uses as his guide the DNA of the chimpanzee. In other words, the studies that seek to prove that human DNA evolved from chimp DNA start with the assumption that chimp DNA represents the original condition (or close to it) from which human DNA diverged.
---End Quote---
No, that is incorrect. It is understood that chimp DNA has also been changing since the time of the common ancestor and is no more like that of the common ancestor than human DNA is. In fact, I recently saw a news report that said there may have been more changes in DNA of the chimp lineage since the last common ancestor than in DNA in the human lineage. It is definitely not the case that any study is seeking to prove that human DNA evolved from chimp DNA. (Trees, not ladders, remember).
One of the interesting things about mtEve is that she is not necessarily the same person from one generation to another.
No, this is also incorrect. They are not comparing human DNA to non-human DNA here. What they are doing is considering how many different alleles of a gene exist at one locus on a chromosome. Over time, in any stable population, genes can come to exist in many variant forms. Some genes have hundreds of slightly different forms called alleles. They all do the same thing, but they have somewhat different sequences. (It is rather like British and American English having the same word but with different spellings like "tire" and "tyre" or "color" and "colour". Even when there are hundreds of these different alleles for one locus in the population, each individual can only have two of them. So, if a small group breaks off from the main population and goes its separate way (like a group leaving Africa and heading along the coast down to India), it carries only a small sample of all the alleles in the population left behind. In time it acquires (through mutation) new alleles of its own. But the population it left behind is also still acquiring new alleles of its own. So the older population will usually have more genetic variation than a new separated population even after many generations. This can go on many times over the generations. A tiny group that settled on Pitcairn Island only two centuries ago has very few genetic differences. There hasn't been enough time for many new alleles to appear.
So there is no need to bring in any comparison with non-human hominids. What the geneticists have learned is that there is far more natural variation in African populations than in non-African populations. Also the further away from Africa, the less the variation. This suggests that Africa has the oldest continuing human population, with others being founded at later times. And one doesn't need to draw non-humans into the comparison at all.
Interestingly, this has a parallel in human language. A recent news report (I'll try to find this one) tells of the discovery that African languages have more phonemes (units of sound, like a single vowel or consonant) than most non-African languages. Also, the further away a population is from Africa, the more phonemes have disappeared from their language. Hawaiian apparently has the fewest phonemes of modern human languages. So in this instance cultural evolution has paralleled biological evolution in humans.
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Where else in science is it an allowable procedure to assume your conclusions in order to backup your conclusions and in fact model your entire model upon these assumed conclusions?
---End Quote---
Everywhere. It is basic scientific method to:
a) draw up a hypothetical explanation of some observations
b) assume provisionally that it is true
c) deduce what the consequences must be if it is true
d) set up an experiment or series of observations to see if the consequences exist in reality.
If the consequences do exist, then the hypothesis is tentatively accepted as true; but is still subject to further testing.
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This alongside the mtEve model contradicting the fossil record, it does beg the question, what is reliable, DNA or fossils, if it's DNA the fossil recored is all up the treeif it's fossils DNA as a model is all up the tree
---End Quote---
Ah, one of the most fascinating phylogenetic questions of our time. However, it is not a matter of either being "all up the tree". There is sufficient consistency between the two to convince scientists that current anomalies are mostly a matter of insufficient data. And molecular data have solved many questions that could not be solved from fossils alone.
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because we never evolved from chimps.
---End Quote---
Right, we did not. We only share a common ancestor with them. We evolved from that ancestor (as did many other species).
[/QUOTE
lol, if you want to be picky
hmm, how about, apes, rats, mice and hamsters are not our cousins, Especially not rats because I'm jealous their Gulo Gene is still active
...Did you get the "trees not ladders" diagram I posted earlier? The whole concept of "higher" "lower" "more or less advanced" "sub-human" etc. just has no place in evolutionary thinking.
Originally Posted by Dark_Lite
False dichotomy. It's not an either/or choice. Understanding changes, yes, but that doesn't mean everything is thrown out.
Posted by Ty --- I was not presenting only 2 choices as viable, what I was saying was that they don't know which is reliable and they are the two best options they have for evolutionary ancestry of humans how could they rely on either of them, and if they can't rely on either of them evolution falls away as a plausible theory.
As you have called it a false dichotomy can you please present the other options other than DNA and Fossils for determining ancestry.
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