Let's Discuss Scientific Objections to Evolution

[Guest theElect777]

one.opinion,

 

If Christ took as long to return from this moment, in relative age to the Universe (13 Billion+), would our current state evolve to the next possibly 4 to 10 phases?   In your guestimation, where would that put us?   Equal to what we perceive intelligently as Aliens, or something even further advanced?

[Marathoner]

15 hours ago, theElect777 said:

And what is your background relative to where you could provide answers to any such question pertaining to Biological Evolution?

I attended college and received an education in the four fields of North American anthropology: biological (physical), cultural, linguistic, and archeology. Biological anthropology is the academic equivalent of evolutionary biology with a focus on human origins. All but one field of NA anthropology overlaps with other scientific disciplines, with biology being my favorite.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Marathoner

[Marathoner]

I need to correct myself: archeology in many ways is a pursuit unique in the North American system, but out of necessity archeologists must cooperate with scientists in other fields (such as geologists, ecologists and at times, paleontologists). 

[Marathoner]

9 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Dr. Joshua Swamidass is a tenured computational biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. He recently wrote a book called "The Genealogical Adam and Eve" that explains that it is possible that a de novo creation of Adam and Eve co

 

uld have occurred in the YEC time frame of 6,000-10,000 years ago IF we accept that other biological humans were also present on earth at the same time of Adam and Eve. He argues that it is possible, after expulsion from the Garden, that Adam and Eve could have merged gene pools with these other humans and by the time of Christ, could have been genealogical ancestors of everyone on the planet.

Fascinating. My time in the field is rather dated (I left academia years ago) but I recall successive discoveries of fossilized remains which pushed the temporal window of our appearance on Earth further into antiquity with each new revelation. The 500,000 year benchmark appears to have supplanted previous estimations, which is to say the emergence of modern traits start appearing in the fossil record at that point in geological time. 

There's no question that every human alive is more closely related than some might suspect. There is little genetic variability to speak of between humans living today, lending credence to the notion that we share the same mother and father at some point in space and time. I like to illustrate our uniqueness this way:

Homo Erectus endured for close to 1.75 million years on this planet and during this mind-boggling span of time, Erectus didn't change. 
The Neanderthals emerged earlier than the first modern humans and like Erectus, changed little during their 465,000 years on Earth. Their global population peaked roughly 130,000 years ago before steadily declining until the last known enclave on Gibraltar perished.
We emerged later than both and over the span of 10,000 years spread across the Earth, conquered the oceans and even the sky, and have escaped the orbit of our world to walk upon the surface of our Moon.     

Edited July 30, 2020 by Marathoner

[Marathoner]

Case in point: the entire range of human phenotypical expression is found in the African genome. 

[one.opinion]

15 hours ago, theElect777 said:

 In your guestimation, where would that put us?   Equal to what we perceive intelligently as Aliens, or something even further advanced?

It's really impossible to guess with anything even close to accuracy.

[one.opinion]

16 hours ago, one.opinion said:

He argues that it is possible, after expulsion from the Garden, that Adam and Eve could have merged gene pools with these other humans and by the time of Christ, could have been genealogical ancestors of everyone on the planet.

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but better late than never maybe? There is a critical difference between genealogical ancestry and genetic ancestry. Genetic ancestry can be observed and tracked. We could look at our DNA and see a strong resemblance to the genomes of our parents. And a slightly weaker resemblance with grandparents, and progressively weaker with each generation. If we go back enough generations, there would be no trace in our genetics, but we could have a genealogical record. What Swamidass states is that it is possible that Adam and Eve could be genealogical ancestors to all people on the planet today, and could have been those genealogical ancestors at the time of Christ.

This is different from genetic ancestry dealing with things you have all probably at least heard of before like the "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y chromosome Adam". The Adam and Eve monikers are not literal, but refer to an unknown ancestor in the past that we can all trace our mitochondrial DNA back to, or us Y chromosome carriers can trace that back to. The Adam and Eve nicknames are possibly confusing and misleading because the concept does not at all try ot suggest this was the first mitochondrial DNA sample or Y chromosome DNA sample, but the most recent sample we could hypothetically all trace back to. This does not preclude older samples in any way.

You can read more here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

[Wesley L]

18 hours ago, one.opinion said:

The main assumption is that the rate of mutation we can observe in the human genome today has been uniform over long periods of time, like those 500,000 years. This gets into computational biology, which is certainly not my main area of expertise, but based on the observed variation in the human genome today and the rate of mutation that would yield that diversity, it is possible to extrapolate how long ago it was conceivable that the human population consisted of only two people. I have seen several people report the results of this work and the minimum age of a single breeding pair is consistently estimated around that 500,000 year old mark. Again, based on the starting data, that is the minimum. So organizations like the Discovery Institute and Reasons to Believe frequently guess that Adam and Eve must have been on the planet roughly half a million years ago. The fact that multiple people in multiple organizations have done this, and would have every reason to place the date as close to modern as possible, and come with the same rough figures shows that the models are consistent and lends weight to their accuracy.

Dr. Joshua Swamidass is a tenured computational biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. He recently wrote a book called "The Genealogical Adam and Eve" that explains that it is possible that a de novo creation of Adam and Eve could have occurred in the YEC time frame of 6,000-10,000 years ago IF we accept that other biological humans were also present on earth at the same time of Adam and Eve. He argues that it is possible, after expulsion from the Garden, that Adam and Eve could have merged gene pools with these other humans and by the time of Christ, could have been genealogical ancestors of everyone on the planet.

Carbon dating is usually used for organic samples since the half-life of the 14C isotope is much shorter than other radioisotopes used for dating rock samples. Carbon dating loses usefulness past about 50,000 years. So hypothetically, this could be done on an ancestor, provided you were extremely careful to avoid any contamination. You can read more about carbon dating here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

Rock samples require isotopes with much longer half-lives. Several pairs are available. The accuracy of dating with one isotope can be supported by using another isotope. You can read more about other types of radiometric dating here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

Thanks for your explaination.
But what I was actually going for was that both sciences are not totally rock solid, because it has assumptions build into it.
The reason for those assumptions is just because we don't have the data which is needed to make these models accurate.
You mentioned contamination as well, I can figure that in thousands of years, much can happen. And if millions of years, even more so.

At some point, we have to make a decision for ourselves where we put our trust in. Do we have enough faith in the scientists with those assumptions build into those calculation models? 

I understand that some christians would try to match the scientific worldview with Genesis. I understand that that could be a possible truth, but I personally just don't know. And when using "science" derived from models with inaccurate human predictions of historic data to compare with the word of God. I tend to be sceptic about the "scientific" results. 

If these models of predicting the history contradicts with God's words, I choose God's words as my faith in God is certain.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Wesley L

[Marathoner]

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is found only in the mitochondrion of our cells and thus is separate from the chromosomes in the nucleus. This DNA mutates less frequently than the alleles of the nucleus and is inherited from our mother in the cytoplasm of the egg; we don't receive mitochondria from our father. Due to this resistance to mutation mtDNA is therefore the ideal material for determining genetic origins... little changes over the span of a dozen generations.   

[Marathoner]

While it's true the 98.8% of the human genome is shared in common with the chimpanzee, it's worth pointing out something important: we have 23 pairs of chromosomes whereas the chimpanzee has 24. The same holds true for gorillas and orangutans.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Marathoner