On Wed, 31 Oct 2001 15:56:52 -0500 "bivalve"
<bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com> writes:
> >AiG assumes only land animals were brought onto the ark.
> Furthermore they assume these were represented by a sample number of
> 2 for each kind (more for clean but not significantly more for my
> question). Then they assume rapid radiation of those animals into
> many tens if not hundreds of species.
> >This raises the following question in my mind:
> >Is there not a specific testable genetic hypothesis that falls out
> of this scenarion. Should there not be a discernable difference
> between the genetics of land animals and all othere organisms but
> especially between other animals (or even mamals such as whales,
> seals)?<
>
> DC: Yes, this should produce an obvious bottleneck with the relevant
> genetic consequences. It also means that the DNA (especially
> non-recombining sequences) should be readily traced back to one or
> two copies in the relatively recent past, ala mitochondrial Eve.
> The patterns should be similar for many different kinds of
> organisms, although molecular clock assumptions are always
> problematic.
>
> There could be similar bottlenecks in the populations of aquatic
> animals, if the Flood killed most of them as well. However, the
> failure to find widespread evidence for population bottlenecks,
> plausibly dating from the same time, should be seen as problematic
> for AiG.
>
> Exactly which animals were on the ark, and how those not on board
> survived the wild events purportedly going on outside, is not too
> clear in the YEC explanations that I have seen. Invertebrates seem
> generally ignored.
>
> >Basic genetics to me would suggest that the non-bottlenecked
> animals would have had much much greater potential for rapid
> diversification and since they presumably would be in the same
> conditions after the flood the YEC model would predict vastly
> greater radiations among these organisms than among Ark-bound
> animals. <
>
> DC: The extreme of only a few individuals does make the genetic
> viability of the population questionable. On the other hand, small
> populations are good for allowing new genes to spread and for
> limiting the pressure of competition, allowing more suboptimal forms
> to survive.
>
> Dr. David Campbell
> Old Seashells
I have run across another problem springing from the capacity of the Ark.
Morris divided the volume by the volume of a railroad stock car and
multiplied by the car's capacity to get a large figure. When some of the
YECs recognized that cars can be pulled onto a siding for feeding and
watering the stock, while the Ark, apart from miraculous intervention,
had to carry the supplies for the year and however long it took for
something to regrow postdiluvially, they suggested that only a pair from
a family (or genus) was necessary. Considering just the genus Felis,
every species had to differentiate within 4 millennia.. Since the Old
Testament notes lions and leopards, those two had to differentiate in 2.
With the equids, horses and asses known to the patriarchs, the
differentiation would be even faster. That is a rate of speciation that
should be clearly observable today--unless the changes were all produced
by direct divine interference, when flood geology and creation science
are fully oxymoronic because miracles are not within the province of
science. Anybody want to calculate the mutation rate involved in these
and similar transformations on the YEC assumptions?
Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 31 2001 - 18:01:35 EST