>-----Original Message-----
>From: stromme@mi.uib.no [mailto:stromme@mi.uib.no]
>Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 10:13 AM
>To: Glenn Morton
>Glenn, I for one would grant you the possibility of those 3 million
>years, but there is still the rest of the civilization bit in Howard's
>post to consider. You have argued very convincingly that the eight
>survivors of the flood would need very long time to rebuild an
>advanced civilization. A similarly long time would have to be added
>to your 3 million years.
The 3 million+ years IS the time needed to rebuild. I say that the only way
to have any semblance of actual history in the Genesis account is to move
the flood way back to 5.5 myr. I don't see the need to add more time for
rebuilding than that. I also would point out that since 1995 when I first
suggested this idea that no one likes, we have discovered that:
1. Australopithecus garhi, a being with a brain only 1/3 the size of ours
(460 cc) actually made stone tools,
2. Australopithecus robustus, a being with a similar sized brain made bone
tools
3. mtDNA indicate that we humans are NOT a recent creation (Mungo man)
4. Our nuclear genetics indicate a very ANCIENT history for mankind.
Yet Christian apologetics remains stuck in the view that man MUST have been
created recently. Why? Because for some reason we are willing to let the
account of the flood become so fuzzy as to represent any event so long as it
had water in it and regardless of whether it could actually happen, yet we
are not willing to accommodate an old humanity, which the archeological data
clearly implies. Like the YECs we believe that the Bible actually teaches a
young humanity. And I would ask why?
Concerning evidence for an ancient humanity from nuclear genetics, I would
point out an article published just 2 days ago:
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 3, 864-869, January 30, 2001
"A highly variable segment of human subterminal 16p reveals a history of
population growth for modern humans outside Africa"
Santos Alonso and John A. L. Armour Institute of Genetics, University of
Nottingham, Queen's Medical Center, Nottingham NG7 2UH, United Kingdom
Edited by Henry C. Harpending, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, and
approved November 3, 2000 (received for review May 26, 2000)
"We have sequenced a highly polymorphic subterminal noncoding region from
human chromosome 16p13.3, flanking the 5' end of the hypervariable
minisatellite MS205, in 100 chromosomes sampled from different African and
Euroasiatic populations. Coalescence analysis indicates that the time to the
most recent common ancestor (approximately 1 million years) predates the
appearance of anatomically modern human forms. The root of the network
describing this variability lies in Africa. African populations show a
greater level of diversity and deeper branches. Most Euroasiatic variability
seems to have been generated after a recent out-of-Africa range expansion. A
history of population growth is the most likely scenario for the Euroasiatic
populations. This pattern of nuclear variability can be reconciled with
inferences based on mitochondrial DNA.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/3/864
This is in addition to the data found by Wallace (and there are many
others):
“Regardless of the origin of the putative AD missense mutation mtDNAs, the
nuclear CO1 and CO2 sequences reported in this study are interesting in
their own respect. They were transferred from the mtDNA to the nucleus long
after the hominid lineage separated from the chimpanzee and gorilla
lineages. Because the time of insertion of the sequence into the nucleus is
estimated to be about 770,000 years before present, the transfer of these
sequences might have occurred in archaic Homo.” Douglas C. Wallace, et al,
“Ancient mtDNA sequences in the Human Nuclear Genome: A Potential Source of
Errors in Identifying Pathogenic Mutations,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.,
94(1997):14900-14905, p. 14905
But what do christians do? What we have always done--ignore the data and
maintain our falsified theological/historical position. Old earth christians
are pleased to tell the YECs and ID folk that they are messing up with the
data but they are less willing to admit that they too offer an already
falsified theological/historical position. And many are please to tell me
something I already know--that I can't prove my viewpoint actually happened.
But even given that I can't prove my version of the flood, I CAN PROVE THAT
THE FLOOD SCENARIOS OFFERED BY OTHER WIDELY ACCEPTED VIEWS ARE ABSOLUTELY
CONTRADICTED BY THE DATA. (I would clarify that by claiming that the flood
occurs in Mesopotamia, one is thereby proclaiming what he believes is the
historical reality of the flood--which is totally at odds with the
historical/scientific data). The only way out is to make the flood account
be a nice little story in which the details don't matter.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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