Introduction
When it comes to the debate between secular science and Christianity, a hot topic is often the book of Genesis and the claim that humanity is only roughly 6000 years old, whilst the secular world views humans as hundreds of thousands of years old.
This is based largely off of evolutionary paradigm, and the assumption of various fossils being the evolutionary ancestors of certain human and human-like species (“Hominoids” as they are professionally known).
Some Christians may choose to believe in theistic evolution, and see Genesis as purely symbolic. However, I personally cannot view the scriptures this way (though I’m not a young Earth creationist, I do believe Genesis speaks of an old Earth account), mainly due to the fact that it affects the entire theology of the Bible and the very reason of Yeshua’s needing to die for our sins.
According to scripture, Yeshua had to free mankind from the debt of sin the first man Adam passed down to us as his offspring, which means all humans came from Adam and his wive Eve, the “mother of all living” today. We are told that Adam according to Biblical chronology and family trees was roughly from 8000-6000 years ago. If mankind evolved from apes before Adam was made, this means that either there would have been a mass extinction event leaving only Adam and Eve behind, or that not all humans are of Adam’s lineage, which is not something mentioned in scripture, and the only human extinction event mentioned is the Global Flood, something that happened ‘after’ Adam.
Whilst some have attempted to defend the theistic evolutionary model whilst also believing in a literal Adam and Eve, by means of claiming Adam was the ‘representative’ of all mankind and therefore got them all cursed, this really still doesn’t line up with the notion that they are said to be the parents of all mankind, as was doubled down on New Testament eschatology in relation to the fall and redemption of man (1 Corinthians 15:45).
The only other feasible theory for the age of mankind being beyond 8000 years in the Biblical genealogical record would be to claim the genalogy prior to Abraham isn’t literal, but focused, or thematic with gaps in the lineage (in the sense that some argue Yeshua’s lineage in Matthew’s Gospel to be).
The Human Genome
So what brings up the topic of the human genome? You may wonder.
In the world of modern science, genetics have played a large part in the study of the origins of all species, including that of humanity. Specifically, in this case, the mapping of the human genome is often used to assert the age of the human race (including that of the “subspecies”).
It is claimed that the genome of our DNA can be read like a family tree, thus proving the age of humanity. I won’t pretend to be a geneticist and that I have total understanding of the calculations at hand, that would be a lie on my part, so I won’t pretend otherwise.
In my research of looking for the answer and evidence of ‘how’ scientists confirm the age of humanity by mapping the genome, I was provided with an answer along the lines of; genes are replicated as they are passed down, with slight changes or mutations. On this basis, it is thought that the age of a species can be calculated by the number of changes or mutations in the genes carried in its DNA. The more different the DNA in the ancestral fossil to modern humans, the older it must be.
This though, of course, does rely upon, again, the assumption of mathematical consistency. Akin to the radiocarbon dating, assuming the levels of carbon is consistent throughout all life through history. It would have to assume that the mutation of genetics has been consistent throughout the history of humanity in order to be able to read it like a family tree and confirm the age of humanity, of which of course, according to geneticists… it hasn’t been consistent. Rather, mapping the genome in the effort to study humanity has birthed interesting results which have shaken up the scientific community.
Our Genome is Radically Smaller than Expected
Before the human genome was studied in depth, based upon the premise of the asserted age of humanity, scientist estimations proposed there were to be hundreds of thousands, if not more, genes in the human genome as a result of the accumulation, duplication, and mutation over the course of hundreds of thousands of years worth of human ancestry and evolution….
However, the studies revealed that the human genome possesses far fewer genes than previously estimated. From what was expected to be at least above 142,000, genetic mapping revealed merely a number of what appears to be only to be between 25,000 to 19,000 genes (and over time through continuous research the number appears to be getting smaller and smaller), a number one would expect to be in a species either far younger, or far less complex, than humanity. To answer this unexpected result however, was not to suggest humans may be younger than originally thought, for that would conflict with the established doctrine of evolution, but rather, scientists such as Professor Stephen Jay Gould merely state:
“The key to complexity is not more genes, but more combinations and interactions generated by fewer units of code”. – Stephen Jay Gould, Evolutionary Biologist
On the notion of complexity and human intelligence, that statement may indeed be the case. Of course, the issue with this finding is that it does not line up with the expected mathematical results of which is meant to prove the age of humans and their ever expanding complexity over time via the mutation and accumulation of genes, which evolutionists and scientists state is consistent in all other lifeforms. One of the only answers to this is that the human genome must have “shrunk” via deletion of certain genes over time due to “rapid mutation”, leaving only the “essential parts” still in us today.
Seeing that the human genome is, in fact, far smaller than that was originally estimated, it may serve to propose that humans are not as old as the theory of evolution suggests, but rather, fall in line with a date closer to that of traditional biblical proportions.
Our Genome has “Evolved too Fast”
Another confusion of the resulting genome studies is the discovery that humans have “evolved faster than any other lifeform on Earth in history”.
Such discovery has in recent years propagated the need for some sort of explanation which is consistent with evolution’s framework. An attempted explanation was first coined in the year 2006 as “Human accelerated regions (HARs)”. To explain in short, for “some reason”, human genes have rapidly mutated, causing our “unprecedented jump” in evolutionary speed, resulting in humanity’s “uniqueness to the animal kingdom” in both genetics, and in our rapid neurological advancements.
Meanwhile, other scientists, such as Denis Noble suggest, that the only possibility is that Neo-Darwinism and Reductionism is a false paradigm, and that from the beginning there had to be “preformed” or “pre-existing structures” capable of evolving in clusters directed via the species’ “intent” or “purpose”, there being a “rational” behind evolution.
Human accelerated regions (HARs), first described in August 2006,are a set of 49 segments of the human genome that are conserved throughout vertebrate evolution but are strikingly different in humans. They are named according to their degree of difference between humans and chimpanzees (HAR1 showing the largest degree of human-chimpanzee differences). Found by scanning through genomic databases of multiple species, some of these highly mutated areas may contribute to human-specific traits. Others may represent loss of functional mutations, possibly due to the action of biased gene conversion rather than adaptive evolution.
There are 18 base pair mutations different between humans and chimpanzees, far more than expected by its history of conservation.
HAR2 includes HACNS1 a gene enhancer “that may have contributed to the evolution of the uniquely opposable human thumb, and possibly also modifications in the ankle or foot that allow humans to walk on two legs”. – Wikipedia, Human accelerated reigons
“Evolution is like getting a child to build a lego arch, or a piece of architecture – if you give a child just bricks, it will take far longer, and we don’t have that amount of time for individual mutations to evolve functionality, but give a child pre-formed bricks, it is blindingly obvious if the child is given the ‘pre-formed’ structures, will get there ‘much’ faster, and that’s exactly what we have seen nature do – and the human genome shows that this is exactly what must have happened to us in evolutionary history…
[I’m going to turn each one of [Richard Dawkin’s ‘Selfish Gene‘] statements upside down… [genes] are locked inside highly intelligent beings, (that’s you and me), moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves, and incidently, it’s our joy, not theirs. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.
Mutations are not random… and so far, it has not been shown that this proccess could give rise to a new species… [just] new varieties [of a species]”. – Denis Noble, Evolutionary Physiologist & Biologist
However, it is only through the framework of evolution such results are seen as “abnormalities” in need of explanation. But such data need not be seen as an “abnormality” or “puzzle”, if it were part of an alternate framework in which these results are to be ‘expected’.
If the genes of a species were expected to be in the hundreds of thousands on the basis of its assumed age, but upon discovery resulted being merely in the lower thousands, and that mankind has not had the ammount of time needed in existence to evolve as it has, perhaps it may be the case that the years suggested of humankind’s existence is wrong, hence also, being radically different from the suggestion of hundreds of thousands, to a mere few thousand.
If this data is looked through the traditional biblical lens of Genesis, then Humanity’s advancement need not be some sort of abnormal and unexplainable genetic mutation…
But the size and complexity of the human genome isn’t the only line of genetic evidence which may support the notion of a biblical paradigm, either.
All Mankind Descends From Two Humans
A major difference between evolution and creation, is the notion of there being multiple humans in the beginning, as opposed to there being merely two humans in the beginning of which all humans descended.
A study undertaken by evolutionist scientists Mark Stoeckle and David Thaler of the University of Basel in Switzerland, now published in “Human Evolution” (2018), examined the genes of various species, including humans. According to their research, the DNA they examined went against the premise of modern day humans coming from a large population, of which evolutionists have suggested for years. This research further solidifed the earlier akin discoveries by Cann, Stoneking and Wislon in 1987.
Rather, they found that all modern humans today are genetically from but “two humans”. These results at first were received with denial and resistance, even by the very scientists that discovered them:
“The conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could” – David Thaler
A discussion of this research was published by several outlets, which state:
“Based on those barcodes, which are really just tiny bits of DNA from the mitochondria of living cells, the researchers concluded that their data are “consistent with” the hypothesis that all of humanity are the descendants of a single pair of adults who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. The study showed that there is very little genetic diversity among humans when you look at our mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is a part of our genetic code that is passed to us from our mothers and it doesn’t mix with our nuclear DNA, making it possible to trace a direct maternal genetic line. The real mystery is, how and why the human population needed to restart at all. The last extinction event occurred over 65 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs. This question opens us up to the idea that maybe humans are built to periodically “reboot” — dying out, then starting again from scratch.” – New Zealand Herald on David Thaler‘s & Mark Stoeckle‘s researc
“A scientific study has prompted speculation that all modern humans could have descended from a solitary pair who lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago….. Stoeckle and Thaler, the scientists who headed the study, concluded that ninety percent of all animal species alive today come from parents that all began giving birth at roughly the same time, less than 250 thousand years ago – throwing into doubt the patterns of human evolution… The study has been misunderstood by some religious parties who thought it meant that we all came into being in some seminal Big Bang-typed event 100,000 ago, but this isn’t what the findings actually suggest. What Stoeckle and Thaler’s findings point to is that our species has to revamp far more often than we thought, and we do so in unison with all animals”. – Daily Mail on David Thaler‘s & Mark Stoeckle‘s research
“…this genetic Eve is simply the most recent female ancestor to whom all modern humans can trace their genealogy. In other words, there were many women who came before her and many women who came after, but her genetic code is the point from which all modern branches on humanity’s family tree grew… the human population became dramatically reduced, and there weren’t many women around to have kids, the stage is set for one “Lucky Mother,” as Cann puts it, to emerge as a most recent common ancestor… It’s possible that after a few generations, the mtDNA of the other women died out. If a woman produces only male offspring, she won’t pass on her mtDNA since children don’t receive mtDNA from their father. This means that while the woman’s sons will have her mtDNA, her grandchildren won’t, and her line will be lost”. – How Stuff Works, Eve Gene: Do We All Descend From a Common Female Ancestor?
As we read, such revolutionary finds have forcibly promoted the exploration of radical new ideas in the scientific community in response, because it appears to be so out of place to what has been believed for many years in the scientific community in regard to the origins of humanity.
One explanation in their framework is that somehow there must have been a near extinction or “rebooting” event for humans, followed by a “reset”, explaining how we all who exist today have come from but two ancient ancestors. But these ideas have yet to be tangibly proven, and do not match the current ‘secular’ understanding of pre-historic times and humanity’s development.
Some have put forth the alternative idea that these pair were not a “couple”, but lived far apart from each other, even in different time periods, and that merely “their individual children” had children with each other as cousins, and just happening to win the genetic lottery every time so that only their genes were passed down amongst all of their human peers down to modern day humans, creating an “illusion” that all humans began from a single ancestral pair. This notion is more fully explained in this video:
The basic premise being our ancestor parent’s children were breeding with all the other family trees of ancient humanity that evolved as a mass species alongside them, but only their genes won out, consistently, for hundreds of thousands of years, down to the modern day.
But this idea doesn’t explain what happened to everyone else, whether they died out, or why and how we just happened to only preserve the genetics of two specific ancestors amongst the hundreds of millions of other contemporaries that have come and gone over time in an unbroken chain. In my opinion it sounds extremely ludicrous and highly mathematically improbable.
Some research, however, has strongly advocated both of these ancient ancestors to be of a similar, if not the same age to one another, living in the same timeframe, and location, which means that it was in fact possible for them to be a true couple, and for all living today to be their offspring, and some studies have even come to drastically different dates of the time they were estimated to be alive, such as a study named: A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region (Nature Genetics, April 1997), which put the calculations to only roughly 6500 years ago, by means of studying ‘only’ the human genetics, without trying to calculate them in tandem with assumption of common ape ancestry descendance.
“Two major studies of modern humans’ Y chromosomes suggest that ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’ may have lived around the same time after all”. – Ewen Callaway, Nature News.
“…this rate places mtEve at 6000 years ago, obviously nobody think that’s the case”. – Ann Gibbons on Parsons & Al Study
“The time period that human MRCA lived is unknown. Rohde et. al put forth a “rough guess” that the MRCA could have existed 5000 years ago; however, the authors state that this estimate is “extremely tentative, and the model contains several obvious sources of error, as it was motivated more by considerations of theoretical insight and tractability than by realism.”
Just a few thousand years before the most recent single ancestor shared by all living humans was the time at which all humans who were then alive either left no descendants alive today or were common ancestors of all humans alive today. However, such a late date is difficult to reconcile with the geographical spread of our species and the consequent isolation of different groups from each other”. – Mitochondrial Eve, Wikipedia
The only data at this point that would appear inconsistent with the Bible (if the genealogy is to be taken literally and to be without gaps from Adam to Abraham), is that this “Y-Chromosome-Adam and Mitochondrial-Eve”, as they now refer to them, are stated to have appeared 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
However, as formally addressed, these dates are calculated in accordance to the evolutionary paradigm, forcing scientists to place humankind’s now “confirmed to exist” universally shared ancestral couple (a one time considered “purely” biblical notion), to a date consistent with the established evolutionary theory as it stands, even though there is data that has suggested otherwise in several studies.
Nevertheless, we have genetic evidence which is consistent with the biblical narrative that all humans today descend from but two ancient ancestors who may be not have been from all that long ago.
Proselyte of Yah 