Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve: More evidence against evolution.

Started by Xavier, June 14, 2018, 11:58:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Xavier

1. Very important for evolutionary story-telling is the denial that all humanity descended from two first parents - and therefore of the dogma of original sin. Whereas St. Paul the Apostle, when evangelizing ancient pagans, confidently proclaimed, "And hath made of one, all mankind" (Acts 17:26) reiterating the traditional doctrine that God made the whole human race from one first pair. What does actual science, after removing the evolutionist denial and spin, say about our first parents Adam and Eve? It confirms the unity of the human race and that all and each of us are really and truly descended from Adam and Eve! We men have our y chromosome from this first Father and Patriarch of the human race, specially created from the earth by the direct action of God; and certainly every woman alive has her mitochondrial DNA from our first Mother Eve, specially created by God from Adam's side; in fact all of us alive on earth are demonstrably descended from this Adam and Eve.

So what do the evolutionists do? Do they give up their lie and become Christians, as they should? No, they absurdly insist Adam supposedly married someone else, say, Betty, and Adam and Betty had millions of descendants; it just so (conveniently for the evolutionists, and absolutely unverifiable) happens that all of Betty's descendants have died and are lost to us! Remember all of us are demonstrably descendants of Eve. So what happened to Eve in this evolutionary spin, then? Oh yes, she married someone else, say Carl, and just as coincidentally and mysteriously, though Eve's progeny have survived, Carl's have not, and all men today surprisingly have Adam's Y chromosome!

2.This sounds just like the apostate Darwin's missing transitional fossils which he said would be an "inconceivably great" number and are still missing. Where are the millions of missing descendants from those who were not Adam and Eve, and why did they supposedly die off?

Seriously, why do we tolerate evolutionary propogandists promoting these kinds of lies in any schools,  especially in Christian ones? Do we want to make Christian children pagan ourselves?

3. Evolutionists were stunned when they discovered that 38 men whom they thought were in no way related had no variation in 729 base pairs of their Y chromosome. Further research showed each and every man was descended from a single father, the head of humanity, whom God made them call Adam even against their will. And each and every one of us, man and woman, from one single mother Eve. Our DNA proves it.

The suggestion these were not a couple but a separate man and a separate woman is just preposterous.

A brief summary: "Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. One of those pairs, known as the sex chromosomes (because they determine gender), consists of two X chromosomes in females, and one X-chromosome and one Y-chromosome in males. Girls receive one of their X-chromosomes from their mother and the other from their father. Boys receive the X only from their mother and the Y only from their father. Therefore, the Y-chromosome is passed directly from father to son. Because of this, scientists are able to trace male ancestry.

In 1995, the journal Science published the results of a study in which a segment of the human Y-chromosome from 38 men from different ethnic groups were analyzed for variation (Dorit, R.L., Akashi, H. and Gilbert, W. 1995. "Absence of polymorphism at the ZFY locus on the human Y chromosome." Science 268:1183–1185). The segment of the Y-chromosome consisted of 729 base pairs. To their surprise, the researchers found no variation at all. Their conclusion was that the human race must have experienced a genetic bottleneck sometime in the not-too-distant past. Further research was done, and it was determined that every man alive today actually descended from a single man whom scientists now refer to as "Y-Chromosomal Adam."

Mitochondrial Eve takes it a step further. While Y-chromosomes are only passed down from father to son, mitochondrial-DNA is passed down from mother to both daughter and son. Because mitochondrial-DNA is only passed on by the mother and never the father, mitochondrial-DNA lineage is the same as maternal lineage. Knowing this, scientists have found that every human alive today can trace their ancestry back to a single woman whom they now refer to as "Mitochondrial Eve." While Y-Chromosomal Adam is believed to be the ancestor of every living man, Mitochondrial Eve is believed to be the mother of all living humans, male and female."

Their last lie is that Eve supposedly lived 80-100 thousand years ago, though recent studies have indicated a date less than 10 thousand years ago. https://creation.com/a-shrinking-date-for-eve

QuoteAccording to one review of the data, these recent results would mean that mitochondrial Eve 'lived about 6500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current theories on human origins. Even if the last common mitochondrial ancestor is younger than the last common real ancestor, it remains enigmatic how the known distribution of human populations and genes could have arisen in the past few thousand years.'3

The review in Science's 'Research News' goes still further about Eve's date, saying that 'using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.' The article says about one of the teams of scientists (the Parsons team5) that 'evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations ... they were "stunned" to find 10 base-pair changes, which gave them a rate of one mutation every 40 generations'.4 [so, about 15 times less than their earlier estimate of 80-100 thousand years; or 6-7 thousand years, which fits the traditional timescale nicely]

In our traditional Catholic Christmas Latin liturgy, which used to be said everywhere before 1969, Jesus Christ Our Lord lovingly assures us who are strong in the Faith that Adam and Eve were specially created by Him around 5200 years before He was Incarnate in the Flesh (so less than 10000 years ago, agreeable to the date for Mitochondrial Eve from the creation science site above) for us and for our salvation from original sin and its consequences. Saints and saintly souls have seen the actual skull of the true and historical Adam buried deep under Golgotha/Calvary, the place most ancient Tradition called the Place of the Skull; that the most Precious Blood of the Lamb without stain may even visibly blot out the stain of original sin from the first father of the human race forever! Divine Providence will have it uncovered at the proper time, as the final nail in the coffin of millions of years of evolutionary lies.
Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

GloriaPatri

Y-Chromosomal "Adam" and mitochondrial "Eve" are neither the sole ancestors of humanity, nor are they even contemporaries. They've been dated as having lived thousands of years apart from one another. If you're going to try to "refute" evolution, Xavier, at least know what the hell you're talking about. Right now you just make yourself look ignorant.

Mono no aware

There seems to be a misunderstanding, Xavier.  Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam are simply the most recent common ancestors of all living humans; they are not the sole ancestors of all living humans.  Which is basically to repeat what Gloria Patri said.  But there is nothing in DNA modelling that suggests a human population bottleneck small enough or recent enough to make these two MCRAs contemporaneous six thousand years ago.  Your own source exposes this flaw:

QuoteAccording to one review of the data, these recent results would mean that mitochondrial Eve 'lived about 6500 years ago—a figure clearly incompatible with current theories on human origins. Even if the last common mitochondrial ancestor is younger than the last common real ancestor, it remains enigmatic how the known distribution of human populations and genes could have arisen in the past few thousand years.'

It would not "remain enigmatic" (unless by "enigmatic" the writer means, "logically impossible."  At least if you accept DNA).  There is no way you could have two people in the Middle East in 5199 BC and get to the genetic diversity among the geological spread of populations across the globe by 1500 AD.  You couldn't get the difference in physical characteristics between a Celt, a Zulu, a Japanese, an Inca, and an Australian Aboriginal in so short a time frame from one homogeneous population.  Those differences would require many more thousands of years to evolve.


Xavier

1. Oh, poor Gloria Patri. You do not realize that is the evolutionist spin - the facts are this and this alone: all men alive have their Y chromosome from one  father. All women alive have their mitochondrial DNA from one mother.

Your spin is that these two were not a couple, not the first parents and not contemporaries - all of which are silly falsehoods that you, a former Christian, have foolishly swallowed.

So, then, where did the millions of descendants of Adam's wife go? How is it every woman alive has her mitochondrial dna from Eve? And what happened to the millions of men descended from Eve's husband? How is it every man alive has his Y chromosome from Adam and none of us has his Y chromosome from this mythical supposed other husband of Eve's?

Answer that.

2. You simply do not see how stupid and fanciful is the wild and bizarre speculation of the evolutionists - who were not at all expecting (1) those studied to be related and descended from a common ancestor not that long ago, and even less that (2) all men were descended from one father and (3) all women are descended from one mother.

We're still waiting for proof of the evolutionist's claim that 10,000 monkeyish brutes became men and we are descended from these 10,000.

Creation scientists have shown from even secularist sources that it's perfectly possible mitochondrial Eve lived some 7000 years ago. Read the link above.

3. Michael Denton says beautifully in his epic work, "Evolutuon: A theory in crisis""The fundamental problem in explaining the gaps in terms of...the imperfection of the record is their systematic character—the fact that there are fewer transitional species between the major divisions than between the minor...and this rule applies universally throughout the living kingdom to all types of organisms...But this is the exact reverse of what is required by evolution. Discontinuities we might be able to explain away in terms of some sort of sampling error but their systematic character defies all explanation. If the gaps really were the result of an insufficient search, or the result of the imperfection of the record, then we should expect to find more transitional forms between mouse and whale than between dog and cat."

And just as inexplicably missing for the evolutionists are the millions of descendants from Adam's supposed wife and Eve's supposed husband.

That's because Adam and Eve were married to each by God in the garden of Eden and are the parents of us all.

Edit: Hi Pon De Replay, just saw your post. Will get back to your last point, but same question to you. Let's call Adam's supposed wife Betty and Eve's supposed husband Carl. There are demonstrably billions of sons of Adam and billions of daughters of Eve on this good earth. So, where are the millions and billions of descendants of this hypothetical Betty and Carl? How is it we find not even one? Where is Carl's Y chromosome? Where is Betty's Mitochondrial DNA?

The evolutionists do not see the insuperable difficulties this poses for their 10,000 ancestors claim.
Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

Mono no aware

Quote from: Xavier on June 15, 2018, 07:16:51 AMHi Pon De Replay, just saw your post. Will get back to your last point, but same question to you. Let's call Adam's supposed wife Betty and Eve's supposed husband Carl. There are demonstrably billions of sons of Adam and billions of daughters of Eve on this good earth. So, where are the millions and billions of descendants of this hypothetical Betty and Carl? How is it we find not even one? Where is Carl's Y chromosome? Where is Betty's Mitochondrial DNA?

Greetings, Xavier.  I think you might be misunderstanding the claim.  Take, for example, my own mother, who has three sons and no daughters.  My nephews and my niece therefore do not have her Mitochrondrial DNA, since Mitochondrial DNA is passed through the mother.  Yet we wouldn't ask, "how is it we can find not even one descendant of my mother?"  She obviously has descendants past the first generation, she just has none that are matrilineal, since she had no daughters.  Does that answer your question about Betty?  We do not actually have the DNA sequence of Mitochondrial Eve or Y-Chromosal Adam, or any of their contemporaries.  Betty could theoretically have living descendants; nothing rules that out.

Xavier

Greetings, Pon. Thanks for the civil reply. Hope I can manage not to be polemical in my response! Let me see.

1. Regarding Mitochondrial DNA. Mothers pass on Mt-DNA to both son and daughter. But only their daughters can pass it down subsequently. Do we both agree on that?

I agree with you that since your mother had 3 sons, none of them would be able to transmit it further - since Mt-DNA is passed down mother to daughter to daughter's daughter indefinitely. As you say, one thing and one thing only imo could have led to the extinction of Betty's mitochondrial DNA - the extinction of the matrilineal line. At some point, all remaining female descendants of Betty must be hypothesized to have had no more daughters.

Do we agree?

2. Imagine if you will, Pon De Replay, that your good mother was one of 5000 sisters. What would be the odds that none of your 4999 aunts, among billions of people descended from your family thousands of years later, had any more of a matrilineal lineage - while only your mother still did? I think you might agree that the odds would be vanishingly low, and not at all what we would expect or predict, given the above.

So if the evolutionary hypothesis of 10,000 first ancestors (assuming roughly 5000 monkeyish ancestral couples gave birth to 5000 men and 5000 women roughly), we should be astonished to find only one women's mitochondrial DNA has been transmitted when surveying a population of several billions.

What must have happened if this theory is correct? Each and every one of those other 4999 must have died out in the female line. How probable is that?

3. Regarding Carl's Y chromosome: But in the male line, the case is even more problematic for the 10,000 ancestor hypothesis (TAH). If TAH is correct, what exceedingly implausible scenario do we need to explain what we observe? Not only must all of Carl's sons have never given birth to sons of their own at some point, but the same must have happened to the other 5000 odd men who are alleged to have spawned the whole human race. Else, we men alive today would not all have our y-chromosome from Adam.

Even if the first 5000 men just had 2 sons each, we would soon have 10000 men of different descent with 5000 different y chromosomes. Very soon, it would cross 100,000 men. Did they all just die off? Were all these men unable to give birth to sons at some point? : ) And somehow only Adam did? Really!?!

I think the 2 sole parents (2sp) is immeasurably superior - it predicts exactly what we observe in this regard. Every living man has Adam's Y chromosome and not a single man has been found who did not descend from Adam.

Thoughts?
Bible verses on walking blamelessly with God, after being forgiven from our former sins. Some verses here: https://dailyverses.net/blameless

"[2] He that walketh without blemish, and worketh justice:[3] He that speaketh truth in his heart, who hath not used deceit in his tongue: Nor hath done evil to his neighbour: nor taken up a reproach against his neighbours.(Psalm 14)

"[2] For in many things we all offend. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man."(James 3)

"[14] And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; [15] That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world." (Phil 2:14-15)

Mono no aware

On your first point, Xavier, we agree (for the most part).  Betty's matrilineal line ended.  She could've had daughters, but if she did, then those daughters themselves would've only had sons, or would've died without reproducing.  But yes, I think we agree: it's not the case that a woman leaves no descendants if she has no daughters, or if her daughters have no daughters, &c.

Quote from: Xavier on June 15, 2018, 09:48:47 AM2. Imagine if you will, Pon De Replay, that your good mother was one of 5000 sisters. What would be the odds that none of your 4999 aunts, among billions of people descended from your family thousands of years later, had any more of a matrilineal lineage - while only your mother still did? I think you might agree that the odds would be vanishingly low, and not at all what we would expect or predict, given the above.

So if the evolutionary hypothesis of 10,000 first ancestors (assuming roughly 5000 monkeyish ancestral couples gave birth to 5000 men and 5000 women roughly), we should be astonished to find only one women's mitochondrial DNA has been transmitted when surveying a population of several billions.

What must have happened if this theory is correct? Each and every one of those other 4999 must have died out in the female line. How probable is that?

3. Regarding Carl's Y chromosome: But in the male line, the case is even more problematic for the 10,000 ancestor hypothesis (TAH). If TAH is correct, what exceedingly implausible scenario do we need to explain what we observe? Not only must all of Carl's sons have never given birth to sons of their own at some point, but the same must have happened to the other 5000 odd men who are alleged to have spawned the whole human race. Else, we men alive today would not all have our y-chromosome from Adam.

Even if the first 5000 men just had 2 sons each, we would soon have 10000 men of different descent with 5000 different y chromosomes. Very soon, it would cross 100,000 men. Did they all just die off? Were all these men unable to give birth to sons at some point? : ) And somehow only Adam did? Really!?!

On 2. and 3. here you seem to be making the same point, but I'm afraid this isn't the slam dunk you think it is.  Your math rules out too many variables.  You seem to be assuming that reproductive success was a sure thing sixty thousand years ago.  It wasn't.  Our ancestors lived on a knife's edge.  They did not dominate the world as we do today, and whole pockets of them were easily wiped out by disease, or by the vicissitudes of nature or, indeed, by other humans (there would've been proto-Sauls and—unfortunately for them—proto-Amalekites.  Some things never change).  Entire animal species go extinct all the time; we witness this is in our own day.  It's even more common among populations within a species.

A population of ten or twenty thousand itself is no guarantee of anything, even the survival of the species.  These people did not have modern medicine.  This was pre-agriculture, and large tribes could not be sustained.  These were hunter-gatherers, and they weren't all concentrated in a city of thousands together.  They would've been spread out in small bands, many of which simply failed to make it: a fate rendering not only Carl dead, but the other men in his tribe as well.  Entire groups would've died from their collective misfortune, whereas other groups flourished from their good luck.  Take two tribes with ten men each.  If one dies out and the other's population doubles, you would have the same number of people but only half the number of ancestors.  Factor in that a woman can leave many descendants without having a matrilineal line, and the same for men with patrilineal descendants, and there is really nothing extraordinary about it.  DNA modelling, if you're keen on it, actually shows various population bottlenecks (for Caucasians, for Native Americans) throughout history, not exponential growth.  Exponential growth requires a lot of R&D, hence the recent explosion from ?1 billion people two hundred years ago to seven billion today.

Quote from: Xavier on June 15, 2018, 09:48:47 AMI think the 2 sole parents (2sp) is immeasurably superior - it predicts exactly what we observe in this regard. Every living man has Adam's Y chromosome and not a single man has been found who did not descend from Adam.

Thoughts?

Well, it would only be superior if the rest of the DNA evidence lined up behind Young Earth Creationism.  But it doesn't.  Your claim that Mitochondrial Eve lived less than seven thousand years ago is a logical impossibility if you accept DNA; seven thousand years is so short, it's less than the margin of the estimate itself (150,000 - 200,000 years).  Everything known from DNA requires far, far more time to account for the current genetic diversity that we can see with our own eyes.  Keep in mind that the dating for Y-chromosomal Adam gets pushed back only further in time with the discovery of older Y-DNA haplogroups.



Maximilian

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 01:08:16 PM

Well, it would only be superior if the rest of the DNA evidence lined up behind Young Earth Creationism. 

So you are saying that all the evidence presented here supports Xavier's point. But you know of other evidence elsewhere.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 01:08:16 PM

But it doesn't.  Your claim that Mitochondrial Eve lived less than seven thousand years ago is a logical impossibility if you accept DNA; seven thousand years is so short, it's less than the margin of the estimate itself (150,000 - 200,000 years). 

I don't see the logical impossibility. DNA is a tangible thing. It exists in our cells. That is not logically contradictory to the idea that Eve lived 7,000 years ago.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 01:08:16 PM

Everything known from DNA requires far, far more time to account for the current genetic diversity that we can see with our own eyes. 

Really? I don't see why it requires far more time.

Dogs have much more genetic diversity that we can see with our own eyes than humans. Yet we know for certain that all that diversity arose during the past few thousand years.

Are you saying that there were both toy poodles and golden retrievers more than 7,000 years ago? Or that it took millions of years to create chichuachuas from wolves?

Russian scientists have created new breeds of tame foxes in just a few generations.

Mono no aware

Quote from: Maximilian on June 15, 2018, 06:03:52 PMI don't see the logical impossibility. DNA is a tangible thing. It exists in our cells. That is not logically contradictory to the idea that Eve lived 7,000 years ago.

DNA is our genetic code.  It's why we Celts resemble our parents and our grandparents and not Australian Aboriginals on the other side of the globe.  An Irish couple will not give birth to an Aboriginal baby (well, they could, but I'm sure we can all figure that out.  It would have just as much to do with infidelity as genetics).  The point is that our genes do not surprise us in that manner.  Genetic change among a homogeneous population occurs at a glacial pace.  When there are surprises, they are simply mutations.  If genetic change occurs at the rate Xavier is suggesting, then modern Italians might resemble Confucius just as much as they might Julius Caesar.  But they don't.  Those differences occur because those populations had very little genetic exchange over extremely long periods of time.  Only over the past five hundred years have populations been less isolated and had more genetic exchange, and even in that period of time it's still been fairly static.

Quote from: Maximilian on June 15, 2018, 06:03:52 PMI don't see why it requires far more time.

Dogs have much more genetic diversity that we can see with our own eyes than humans. Yet we know for certain that all that diversity arose during the past few thousand years.

Are you saying that there were both toy poodles and golden retrievers more than 7,000 years ago? Or that it took millions of years to create chichuachuas from wolves?

Russian scientists have created new breeds of tame foxes in just a few generations.

This is comparing apples and oranges.  The genetic diversity of dogs and those foxes come from their having been domesticated: from humans deliberately selecting for traits and breeding for those traits.  If you factor in that kind of control, then of course, the genetic change is greatly accelerated.  (Dogs therefore constitute a great argument for evolution because we can see how genetic change can occur in a speeded-up microcosm).  But for your argument to work, we would have to see wolves becoming poodles in the wild over the course of a thousand years.  Obviously that doesn't happen.  In the wild, the only two real controls are natural selection (i.e., which genes are suited well enough to the environment to survive and reproduce) and sexual selection (i.e., mates selecting for similar qualities: survival and reproductive success).  It's much slower, because typically the environment doesn't radically change on a dime, and mates will tend to be conservative and desire the "tried & true."



Mono no aware

Quote from: Maximilian on June 15, 2018, 06:03:52 PMSo you are saying that all the evidence presented here supports Xavier's point. But you know of other evidence elsewhere.

Sorry, I forgot to answer this in the previous post.  Xavier's evidence actually concedes that if Mitochondrial Eve existed seven thousand years ago, it would "remain enigmatic how the known distribution of human populations and genes could have arisen in the past few thousand years."  Because there would be no way to realistically account for it.  In any event, his evidence is from a paper written in 1997 when DNA sequencing and DNA mapping was nowhere near as refined a process as it is today.

Maximilian

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

The point is that our genes do not surprise us in that manner.  Genetic change among a homogeneous population occurs at a glacial pace.  When there are surprises, they are simply mutations.  If genetic change occurs at the rate Xavier is suggesting, then modern Italians might resemble Confucius just as much as they might Julius Caesar. 

This all sounds like anecdotal evidence. I don't see any science to it. I can just as easily think up my own anecdotes that tell a diametrically opposite story.

For example, reports of scientific studies in the past few days reveal that the "Flynn Effect" was rapidly increasing IQ's for several decades, but starting in 1975 the effect has stopped and now reversed.

So really fundamental changes to the most essential elements of human nature have happened during our lifetimes, and the tangent of the curve has changed direction more than once just in a couple decades.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

Quote from: Maximilian on June 15, 2018, 06:03:52 PMI don't see why it requires far more time.

Dogs have much more genetic diversity that we can see with our own eyes than humans. Yet we know for certain that all that diversity arose during the past few thousand years.

Are you saying that there were both toy poodles and golden retrievers more than 7,000 years ago? Or that it took millions of years to create chichuachuas from wolves?

Russian scientists have created new breeds of tame foxes in just a few generations.

This is comparing apples and oranges.  The genetic diversity of dogs and those foxes come from their having been domesticated:

That's a theory. I don't know of any scientific basis for it. What seems evident, rather, is that the diversity was always present in the genome, and it just took some prodding to bring it out. The same can be equally true of humans, who show very little diversity.

Also, these changes tend to happen overnight. People living in life-threatening situations of wartime or starvation produce epigenetic changes very rapidly. These changes are not always reversible. So Lamarck turns out to be proven right after a couple centuries of being derided.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

from humans deliberately selecting for traits and breeding for those traits.  If you factor in that kind of control, then of course, the genetic change is greatly accelerated. 

Yes, this is the argument for intelligent design. It applies just as much to us as it does to other animals.

But actually, the Russians were not breeding for any particular traits. They were quite surprised to see the dramatic changes in the foxes.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

(Dogs therefore constitute a great argument for evolution because we can see how genetic change can occur in a speeded-up microcosm). 

This is not evolution. Dogs are still one species. Humans are still one species also. All we were discussing was diversity of forms that arise within a single species.

You claim that the existence of black people and yellow people disproves young-age creationism, but that remains entirely unproven and contrary to the obvious evidence we can observe ourselves.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

But for your argument to work, we would have to see wolves becoming poodles in the wild over the course of a thousand years. 

Humans don't live in the wild.

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

In the wild, the only two real controls are natural selection (i.e., which genes are suited well enough to the environment to survive and reproduce) and sexual selection (i.e., mates selecting for similar qualities: survival and reproductive success).

Really? This is a pretty grand claim for which I see little or no evidence. How can we know there are only 2 controls and not more than 2 or less than 2?

Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PM

mates will tend to be conservative and desire the "tried & true."

More "Just So Stories." Things are this way, and so there must be a reason they are this way. Ex post facto descriptions of the obvious passing in the guise of explanations of primary causes.

Mono no aware

Quote from: Maximilian on June 15, 2018, 10:15:17 PM
Quote from: Pon de Replay on June 15, 2018, 06:35:31 PMThe point is that our genes do not surprise us in that manner.  Genetic change among a homogeneous population occurs at a glacial pace.  When there are surprises, they are simply mutations.  If genetic change occurs at the rate Xavier is suggesting, then modern Italians might resemble Confucius just as much as they might Julius Caesar.

This all sounds like anecdotal evidence. I don't see any science to it. I can just as easily think up my own anecdotes that tell a diametrically opposite story.

You are partially correct.  A lot of the evidence we have for this could be classified as "anecdotal": we have the writers from antiquity, whose descriptions of the races and the inhabitants of geographical areas are consonant with what we still see.  And the same goes for the depictions we have in ancient artwork.  It's possible, I suppose, that all the writing and all the art is merely fiction and fantasy.  (In that case, however, hardly anything would be even remotely reliable, and we could scarcely have a discipline called history).  But there is also science to it.  Take, for example, the ages-old controversy over whether the ancient Egyptians were black (a theory I've personally always liked).  The artwork is said to be ambiguous: pro-Afro-Egyptian theorists claim that the differences among the black-, red-, and brown-skinned people (the Egyptians, Ethopians, and Nubians) in Egyptian art are nothing more than the current range of "blackness" (such as light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks) in the New World, where black genes mingled with those of European and indigenous populations.



Alas for the theory, it doesn't seem to be the case.  When the DNA of Egyptian mummies was compared with the DNA of current populations, it aligned with the DNA of people from the Levant and not sub-Saharan Africa (The Washington Post | DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies reveals their ancestry).

Is it your contention, Max, that the peoples of antiquity did not have the same general physical characteristics as the native populations of those same areas today?  Because that would be a curious claim.  Xavier's claim is that humanity is only seven thousand years old—and that the distribution of racial characteristics was arrived at in that short of a time.  I am saying that for one third of those seven thousand years, we have a recorded history that shows a change so incremental as to be nearly a stasis.  We have DNA comparisons and DNA mapping that matches up.  So that would leave even less time: only 4500 hundred years for people to go from one Middle Eastern pair to black, Asian, European, Pacific Islander, Inuit, and Native American.  If the rate of change for physical traits that we can observe and confirm is so slow, then my question is, what evidence do we have that it was much more rapid in the past?