Even Richard Dawkins is Right Sometimes (Is the Biblical story of Adam and Eve a myth?)

Religious Dispatches ^ | 11/28/2011 | Paul Wallace

[Chandalier]

The problem here is that Biblical evidence is also something tangible that can be physically examined. It also discounts the definition of "myth" which is "a sacred explanation for an actual event." Adam and Eve may be literal or figurative, but that has nothing at all to do with the fact that we are the result of a Divine creative act.

Science can only go so far to explain how we happen to exist, but at some point it hits a roadblock that any child the age of 10 can understand. Nothing living can exist apart from something else that is also living. Make of that what you will.

[schaef21]

Based on humans evolving out of a primordial mudpuddle.... a gene magically forming itself out of chemicals that just happened to exist together in the puddle and then gradually evolving to the point that we now have thinking, reasoning beings called humans.... here are a few points to ponder:

Since genes reproduce asexually and animals/humans reproduce sexually.... that means that at some point in time at the exact same place on the planet, two creatures evolved with two separate sets of plumbing that just happened to be perfect for each other.... one having the sperm necessary for life and the other having an egg necessary for life. They also had the ability to inject the sperm into a cavity where the egg existed in order to fertilize it and begin the process of birthing another of the same species... and by the way... the process of fertilization was only the beginning.... the plumbing where the egg evolved is HUGELY complex and necessarily so in order to get that fertilized egg to the point of birth.

Here are a couple of questions:

1. Since Natural Selection IS an observable phenomenon and therefore a fact (and not conjecture)... and we know that Natural Selection will select based on advantage for survival... how did sexual reproduction survive given that observation tells us that asexual reproduction has up to twice as much reproductive success as sexual reproduction? Wouldn’t Natural Selection have selected sexual reproduction out of the process?

2. What are the odds that evolution, a random process, could invent the two complimentary sets of plumbing at the exact same time and the exact same place.... especially given the facts presented above?

3. At what point did chemicals (after all, we started as chemicals) evolve the ability to think?

If your response to the above includes epithets and derision then perhaps you don’t have the ability to think through the questions and answer them in a logical and reasoned manner.

[allmendream]

If having blue eyes became disadvantageous, it being recessive to brown eyes would slow its evolutionary removal from the population - not at all a case of it being recessive being an example of or conducive to its “micro” evolution.

Far from the fact that it is recessive being an example of evolution - only a change in the frequency of its occurrence within a population can be said to be an example of evolution.

So why do mutational defects map to either genetic regions or regulatory regions if “junk” DNA is doing so much? What is it doing such that mutations don't tend to change the organism?

Why would we observe junk DNA being highly different (low conservation) between very similar species if mutations did not freely accumulate within such DNA sequences?

What purpose is the most commonly recognized sequence in the human genome - a degraded gene for reverse transcriptase - put to in the human body? If it has no purpose could it be said to be “junk”?

[Brent Calvert 03969-030]

You are the first person I have come across who has taken the concepts of “time” (ever changing) and “frame of reference” (Earth day vs. God day) and realized that old and young Earth theories can co-exist. I believe that 13.7 billion Earth years equals 6,000 to 7,000 God years. The concept of time fascinates me. With an ever-expanding universe that continues to travel faster with each unit of time measured, old and young as one will someday be revealed to our understanding.

I wish my public school vernacular could accurately articulate what I believe about the existence of time.

[ml/nj]

Do you think the story of Noah is not literal? Why not talk to you about plants?

I notice that you like to ask questions but not to answer them.

No, I don't think the story of Noah is precisely true. And I don't talk about plants because they obviously operate differently from animals and are distinctly different from animals.

Your link is silly. Just say it happens on a chalkboard and it does. Evidence is of little importance in such science. But if mixed up chromosomes are the key to transitions, then they should be occurring all the time. And there would be no reason for them to disappear once they arose. But we simply do not see such things among the reproducing populations of ANY animal. Do we?

ML/NJ

[allmendream]

Well neither do I. I think such an understanding of the story as figurative/ not “precisely true” in the context of Adam and Eve is both apt and relevant.

Yes, plants are distinctly different than animals. What about that fact can you tell me tends to make them NOT an example of how a population can easily change its chromosome number? WHY is it different between animals and plants as far as chromosome number?

My link is easily understandable and explains quite easily how chromosome numbers can change within a population. It is based upon evidence and an actual understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved.

We DO see chromosome differences in individuals - breakages or linkages in chromosomes - they usually don’t manifest with a phenotype at all, unless it is slight infertility.

And there would be reasons for them to disappear once they arose - if their nuber was different than that of the predominant population. Chromosomal segregation during gamete reproduction.

And mixed up chromosomes are NOT key to “transitions”. If you had understood the link he explained it quite simply as being the same information in 46 cabinets or the same information in 48 cabinets. There really wouldn’t usually be a phenotypic difference OTHER than slight infertility with the predominant population.

[ml/nj]

If you had understood the link he explained it quite simply as being the same information in 46 cabinets or the same information in 48 cabinets.

Reality never intrudes for you, does it? Humans are born with 24 chromosome pairs all the time. They are always sterile. You want hypothesize that two such freaks are going to be born that are not sterile, close enough in time and distance to find each other; and that they would have some competitive advantage over normal humans. It doesn't happen among humans or rats or mice; or fruit-flies despite the efforts of scientists world-wide bombarding the poor insects with radiation and trying to mate the mutants

ML/NJ

[mas cerveza por favor]

So why do mutational defects map to either genetic regions or regulatory regions if “junk” DNA is doing so much? What is it doing such that mutations don't tend to change the organism?

Clipped from "The Human Genome: RNA Machine:"

The evidence for large numbers of ncRNAs and for the central importance of ncRNAs as regulators of important developmental, physiological, and neural processes is compelling.14 If all these ncRNAs are functional, as the evidence increasingly suggests they may be, then much and perhaps most of the human genome is functional. If so, the genetic programming of the higher organisms has been fundamentally misunderstood for the past 50 years, because of the presumption - largely true in prokaryotes, but not in complex eukaryotes - that most genetic information is expressed as, and transacted by, proteins.

http://classic.the-scientist.com/2007/10/1/61/1/

[allmendream]

People with chromosomal fusions or breaks have increased infertility - but they are hardly completely sterile.

Chromosomal and genomic analysis shows that human chromosome 2 looks exactly like a fusion of two smaller chromosomes (present as two chromosomes in every other ape)including a degraded centromere sequence.

The observed chromosomal fusions and breakages, resulting in different chromosome number that we see in some individuals (something you claimed didn't even exist), is both necessary and sufficient to explain how such chromosome numbers can change in species sharing a recent common ancestor.

[allmendream]

Much and perhaps most still leaves as much as 49% that can be described as “junk”. Short repeats, endogenous retroviral sequences, unexpressed pseudogenes, and the like.

And almost all the mutations we see leading to defects are in either genetic regions or regulatory regions.

Regions that can express ncRNAs may be counted as regulatory - IF we can find what they are regulating and how - and figure out why mutations seem to not change its function.

[tacticalogic]

There seems to be a lot of replies holding up AGW as proof that science is not "transparent".

To make that argument you have to start with the premise that AGW is science.

Trying to figure out why anyone here would believe that.

[allmendream]

http://blog.openhelix.eu/?p=103

It promotes the idea, erroneous, that there are two kinds of DNA, coding and junk, functional and non-functional.

As I found out in my own Ph.D. studies, the “non-protein-coding” DNA is quite diverse. I studied retrotransposable elements. I have to admit, I’m a former-adaptionist when it came to retroposons. I had a difficult time at first grasping that such a huge part of the genome had no function, for the organism. After more study and thought, I came to the conclusion that retroposons were “selfish” elements having, as a class, no intrinsic function in the genome, but are rather parasitic. Did this make them “junk,”? No, not in the original coined meaning, and not particularly how it’s used now. Are they “non-coding”? No, they code for reverse transcriptase and other proteins. Are they non-functional? Yes and no. They are non-functional like a tick might be for me, but pretty functional when it comes to the tick’s existence.

There are also a lot of sequences in the genome that are ‘throwoffs,’ pseudogenes and the like. DNA that has no function for the genome or for themselves, that could be considered like the ‘junk’ I throw in the basement of my house. I haven’t used it in years, it once might have have a function, it doesn’t now. That I might go back into my basement some day and find a new function for it (as I’ve done recently), doesn’t mean that it now has an intrinsic function, still junk.

And of course there is a lot of DNA, like perhaps these ncRNAs, that have a function in the genome that hasn’t been determine yet. I think what we are finding, and have found, is that the classes of DNA in our genome are quite diverse, protein-coding, regulatory, scaffolding, parasitic, purely unnecessary throw off junk and so much more. I am sure we are going to find functions for DNA sequences we hadn’t ascribed before. 20,000 some protein coding genes need a lot of help to make an organism as complex as a mouse or human. That said, there is a hell of a lot of sequence that is there that we can show to have no ‘function’ in the genome.

[HarleyD]

The Bible talks about a first couple, I agree. I don’t see anywhere that it talks about a “literal” first couple, though.

Luk 3:37-38 the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

1Ti 2:13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve;

[guitarplayer1953]

It seems rather funny that they a back tracked and have found that there 7 women from one clan that are the genetic make up all people.

The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry author Bryan Sykes

One day Hawkins and his like will stand before the great white throne of judgment and will have some explaining to do.

[guitarplayer1953]

"The bible was assembled by a Council that had human hands and a human agenda. It isn’t one monolithic book, it is many books that have some errors - intentional, and unintentional."

would you please point out some of those errors for me? Thanks

[guitarplayer1953]

I have one question for you if evolution is the survival of the fittest does it not seem odd that all through out nature it requires a male and female to pro create. In all the diversity of nature which came first the male or the female and is it not quite a dicey situation that it takes two to procreate? How many things grew and died and did not find another mutation that fit it's genetic code to procreate and how does or did two different plants animals and such know what or who was there's opposite match so to say. Quit a very in effective way to evolve having two to make one offspring.

[allmendream]

In the womb we start with both sets. The simplest sexual reproducers are hermaphrodites. Other animals can reproduce clones of themselves and males are entirely optional.

[guitarplayer1953]

So what and why did the body decide to have a male to complete the process? And the female human can not reproduce without the fertilization of the egg. And I don’t believe that I have ever read where a hermaphrodite has selfinprgnated it self. Are there hemaphrodite plants?

[RobbyS]

Science has not proved any such thing. All science can do is deal with populations. When it says “all”, it means generally. There are always exceptions, because they are dealing with probabilities. If you have a DNA test, notice that if you submit yourself, your mother and your father to DNA tests, that the result is always less than 100% One thing is pretty certain: all human beings are of the same species. No human being is of another species.

[allmendream]

When selection favored it. Female humans are highly advanced animals, more simple animals CAN reproduce without fertilization of the egg. You haven’t read much on the subject then, hermaphrodites self impregnate all the time. Yes, hermaphrodite plants are VERY common.