Adam and Eve Are Possible

From Break Point.org:

An oft-repeated claim by skeptics is that geneticists have disproved the possibility of Adam and Eve. Because existing human genetic diversity is so great, there can be no original couple from whom all people are descended.

Or, that’s what we’re told.

Biology professor and author Dennis Venema summarizes this argument in his book, “Adam and the Genome.” In it, he claims that “every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple.”

An oft-repeated claim by skeptics is that geneticists have disproved the possibility of Adam and Eve. Because existing human genetic diversity is so great, there can be no original couple from whom all people are descended.

Or, that’s what we’re told.

Biology professor and author Dennis Venema summarizes this argument in his book, “Adam and the Genome.” In it, he claims that “every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple.”

Using accepted population growth and mutation rates, Gauger and Hössjer programmed a computer to start with a genetic Adam and Eve and replicate the known distribution of diversity in today’s human population. Their results, to put it simply, fly in the face of the much-touted consensus.

According to their model, a couple who shared some genetic markers could generate all the diversity we see today within about 2 million years—which Venema and others claim is impossible.

However, given two people who share no genetic markers—in other words, two people who weren’t born but were created with four unique sets of chromosomes—that time frame drops to a few hundred thousand, not millions, of years.

Writing at Evolution News, Gauger points out that further tweaks in the rates of population growth, structure, mortality, birth, and mutation could place that theoretical first couple even more recently in history.

In any case, the authors are careful to note that the point of their paper was not to date Adam and Eve, or even to prove from a genetic standpoint that they existed. Rather, they just wanted to demonstrate—contrary to the oft-repeated claim—that it is possible for all human beings to have descended from an original pair. [read more]

Interesting.

Another article about Genesis:

Scientists Admit: Snakes Once had Legs as Described in Book of Genesis