neo-x wrote:You do know you come across very arrogant and obnoxious? Not to mention you entirely avoid questions asked of you.
I don't know how to respond to this so I will leave it at that.
If you don't see how how science tracing women via one ancestral line fits with one Eve, as opposed to having many individual ancestral lines supporting many Eves, then feel free to remain that way. I think many readers here do see it, which I'm assuming by the way some have jumped on board to post. If you don't, then best of luck to you neo-x.
And I think this point is irrelevant, whether its a single line or not, mito eve was not the first human, nor was she the only woman nor she was any way related to mito adam, so no it does not remotely help your argument. Mito eve was a female among other females, she had a mother and a father.
Look one of us is misinformed, either you are or I am. My opinion is that you think mito eve is the biblical eve or close to one. I will leave it up to you how you patch it with genesis but I am going to quote from the ancestor's tale as to why we know this can't be.
That is not my opinion at all; I have never stated that I believe Mito Eve is the Biblical Eve, nor am I arguing this.
Though I believe it unintentional, there is an air of your superiority to your posts that is off-putting, and I don't mean that as an insult. You keep confusing or mixing my words. You do think I'm ill-informed or don't know my science right? Along with a great deal many others here who don't know theirs when it comes to evolutionary science. Such that you presume some sort of naivety within us who disagree with you on such matters, to the point you need to try teach us rather than take seriously any criticism.
It is that, which is what I meant by your coming across obnoxiousness and arrogant to me. And certainly, I wasn't name calling (Daniel if that was reference to me). Name calling would be simply saying you're obnoxious... but rather I am referring to what I feel as your adopted mode and manner of discussion that I just detailed.
Though I don't wish to particularly dwell on this, to provide a further example of what I mean here, I've observed previous discussions between you and others on the board. Whenever evolution is discussed or something pertaining to the Genesis creation, it seems you have this aura of superiority that often comes across in your posts during such discussions. I assume this is either a really sensitive topic for you or one that you are simply very passionate about.
However, this greater "superiority" that comes across, I saw grated on RickD and others here who disagree with "your science" and draw different conclusions from the scientific facts than you do. I'm not being purposefully insulting, but trying to point it out as I see it. For example, consider your trying to teach us the facts of evolution in a thread no one else was allowed to post on, on a discussion board of all places. How do you think that is perceived by others who know science and yet disagree with your positions? We mustn't know science right? And that's exactly what I mean. I'm just calling it as I see it and throwing to the wind any personal offense that might be caused because I personally find this attitude off-putting whether from an Atheist or Christian brother. Either my feeling "put off" is wrong and I should not feel this way, or there is some merit to what I say and perhaps a change in tune, maybe giving a bit more credit to others here could be in order (unless you truly consider us numbats).
Look, your entitled to believe what you do, it doesn't bother me. But you need to argue with facts and reasoning. You've simply knocked, and not presented much by way of physical evidence for the claims that it is absolutely crucial that more than one woman and one man being all of humanities original ancestors is required.
One main argument I've been making is quite basic. To put in syllogistic form:
1) If the human population, in order to survive (beyond a generation or two and not have mutated babies as WannaLearn originally perhaps exaggerated in the original post), requires genetic diversity from an initial population of 300-3000+ ancestors then we would expect to see many traceable lines.
2) ALL human women existing today can be traced to
one mother (Mitochondrial Eve) who existed ~100,000 years ago (an amount which mind you currently contradicts a Biblical scenario).
3) Therefore the human population today (matrilineal) did not start with 300-3000+ ancestors.
So, what physical scientific evidence can be presented to believe that such a high initial population is indeed required for current genetic diversity and correct?
Neo-X wrote:First, it is important to understand that Adam and Eve are only two out of a multitude of MRCAs that we could reach if we traced our way back through different lines. They are the special-case common ancestors that we reach if we travel up the family tree from mother to mother to mother, or father to father to father respectively. But there are many, many other ways of going up the family tree: mother to father to father to mother, mother to mother to father to father, and so forth. Each of these possible pathways will have a different MRCA.
I'm not sure how this is relevant to me or my perceived misunderstanding, but yes fine...
Neo-X wrote:Second, Eve and Adam were not a couple. It would be a major coincidence if they ever met, and they could well have been separated by tens of thousands of years. As a subsidiary point, there are independent reasons to believe that Eve preceded Adam. Males are more variable in reproductive success than females: where some females have five times as many children as other females, the most successful males could have hundreds of times as many children as unsuccessful males. A male with a large harem finds it easy to become a universal ancestor. A female, since she is less likely to have a large family, needs a larger number of generations to achieve the same feat
Again, ok -- there's nothing here I disagree with..
Neo-X wrote:Third, Adam and Eve are shifting honorific titles, not names of particular individuals. If, tomorrow, the last member of some outlying tribe were to die, the baton of Adam, or of Eve, could abruptly be thrown forward several thousand years. The same is true of all the other MRCAs defined by different gene trees. To see why this is so, suppose Eve had two daughters, one of whom eventually gave rise to the Tasmanian aborigines and the other of whom spawned the rest of humanity. And suppose, entirely plausibly, that the female line MRCA uniting 'the rest of humanity' lived 10,000 years later, all other collateral lines descending from Eve having gone extinct apart from the Tasmanians. When Truganinni, the last Tasmanian, died, the title of Eve would instantly have jumped forward 10,000 years.
Yes, makes sense. And if you know the criticisms against Mito Eve, one was that African Americans were used. So they went and got further samples which saw little difference in the results and silenced critics on this front who hated the conclusions it bought to mainstream human evolutionary theories.
Fourth, there was nothing to single out either Adam or Eve for particular notice in their own times. Despite their legendary namesakes, Mitochondrial
Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not particularly lonely. Both would have had plenty of companions, and each may well have had many sexual partners, with
whom they may also have surviving descendants. The only thing that singles them out is that Adam eventually turned out to be hugely endowed with descendants down the male line, and Eve with descendants down the female line. Others among their contemporaries may have left as many descendants all told.
Edit: Yes, that is one take of the evidence of Mito Eve which is quite open ended in this regard.
But, other than the fact Mito Eve destroys what many normally expect as the evolutionary time scale for human evolution, what solid physical evidence is there to support that humanity arose from hundreds or thousands of individuals?
It is one thing to tell a story, it is another to back it up with evidence. Often we as Christians are accused of believing in and re-telling a religious story whether it be creation, Israel or Christ without any evidence (wrongly so as I'm sure you'll agree in the case of Christ)... but in this instance, I see very little evidence to strongly justify believing the estimates of ancestral population size based upon genetic diversity are correct. I see many challenges to such calculations, even real life examples which challenge their accuracy.
Sure, my position is not the popular scientific opinion of today. But "science" is not believing in the popular scientific opinion of the day. One man can, and often has, challenged the entire science of their day and uprooted many false so-called scientific beliefs once deemed fact. You need to present scientific evidence rather than simply claim you've won on this ground. And deferring to the current scientific consensus of today just won't cut it.
I'll readily concede what I believe does not have the majority scientific consensus today any more than Copernicus' beliefs of planetary orbits did in his day. And I'll readily concede that the majority scientific consensus generally believes Neo-Darwinian Evolution and variations thereof to best account for the diversity of life. But, again, this is not "science". Science is not consensus, but rather looks at the physical evidence in a philosophically neutral manner. And sadly today, our social climate is very secular and so many conclusions claimed as scientifically true are in fact philosophical conclusions based upon Philosophical Naturalism.
Neo-X wrote:mito eve is not the only MCRA, she is the only MCRA when we count the mitochondrial dna. Based on a different gene you can come up on a different MCRA.
Yes, ok... but this still doesn't affect my own argument that challenges the status quo of scientists. That is, scientists who argue based on calculations performed on genetic diversity, that humanity arose from hundred or thousands of individuals, not two.
of not having to toss out God's inerrant word, because unlike Neo's version of evolution, Progressive Creationism fits scripture and science.
