July 21, 2013

• Creationism on Race

  I almost agree with some pieces of what these guys at onehumanrace.com say. Except for the fact that they are insane.

  What is the only answer to racism?

  Before we can solve the problem of racism, we must first ask the question: “Where did the different ‘races’ come from?” Explore this site for the answer, plus fascinating scientific research demonstrating that there really are no “white” or “black” people.

  Take it piece by piece. There is no one answer to racism, so the opening question is misleading; but otherwise, the next assertion that it would be useful to know about the origins of human races sounds reasonable to me. But wait: there are no people who can be distinguished by skin color, by ethnicity and history? Weird. I’m going to have to follow a few of their links to see what the heck they are talking about.

  Before you leave the front page of the site, though, look at the fine print at the very bottom of the page. Uh-oh.

  Sponsored by Answers in Genesis, in association with GospelCom.Net and Master Books.

  You now know what to expect. This is going to be race and racism as explained by the residents of a clown college.

  So, how do we answer this essential preliminary question about where races come from? If we need to know the answer before we can solve the problem of racism, this had better be a very good explanation.

  According to the Bible, all humans on Earth today are descended from Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, and before that from Adam and Eve (Genesis 1-11). But today we have many different groups, often called “races,” with what seem to be greatly differing features. The most obvious of these is skin color. Many see this as a reason to doubt the Bible’s record of history. They believe that the various groups could have arisen only by evolving separately over tens of thousands of years. However, as we shall see, this does not follow from the biological evidence.

  The Bible tells us how the population that descended from Noah’s family had one language and by living in one place were disobeying God’s command to “fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1, 11:4). God confused their language, causing a break-up of the population into smaller groups which scattered over the Earth (Genesis 11:8-9). Modern genetics show how, following such a break-up of a population, variations in skin color, for example, can develop in only a few generations. There is good evidence that the various people groups we have today have not been separated for huge periods of time.

  Nope. We’ve got very good evidence that the human species is over 100,000 years old. We can measure the frequency of variations between human subpopulations, we know quite a bit about the rate of accumulation of new variation, and we can calculate how long one group has been diverging from another. We can also look at the pattern and distribution of human genetic variation, and work out historical migrations. This is that distribution:

  
  Pictured: actual science.

  I carry a set of mutant markers that put me in the M343 group, along with a lot of other Europeans. M343 is a relatively new marker, but I also have some mutations that put me in the M173 group; I also share genetics with the M45 goup; they in turn share markers with the M9 group; and working backwards through many shared alleles, I can trace my parentage right back to East African groups, between 100 and 200 thousand years ago.

  Ken Ham is simply lying. Genetics can show how a small number of novelties can arise in a short time…but the evidence shows that human populations have accumulated a large number of variations, and any competent scientist will tell you that there is no way all human variation could have arisen in 4000 years from a starting stock of eight people. Throughout the site, the Hamites constantly make this kind of dishonest argument: they show that a couple of alleles could assort in a couple of generations, and then leap to the assertion that time is irrelevant, and the sum total of all variation could have arisen very quickly, and further, that all human variations were carried by those 8 people on Noah’s big boat.

  It’s strange stuff to read. The creationists have been compelled to accept a surprising amount of evolutionary theory — this bit is hilarious because it shows that they understand the basic principle of Darwinian evolution, and are actually teaching it to their kids. They just shy away from the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of their reasoning.

  Thus, we conclude that the dispersion at Babel broke up a large interbreeding group into small, interbreeding groups. This ensured that the resultant groups would have different mixes of genes for various physical features. By itself, this dispersion would ensure, in a short time, that there would be certain fixed differences in some of these groups, commonly called “races.” In addition, the selection pressure of the environment would modify the existing combinations of genes so that the physical characteristics of each group would tend to suit their environment.

  That’s just plain old basic evolutionary theory right there, and in fact, it’s a kind of hyper-Darwinism…except for one significant difference that they spill in the next paragraph: no novel variations are allowed. Every gene now present in our population stepped off the Ark with Noah’s family.

  There has been no simple-to-complex evolution of any genes, for the genes were present already. The dominant features of the various people groups result from different combinations of previously existing created genes, plus some minor degenerative changes, resulting from mutation (accidental changes which can be inherited). The originally created (genetic) information has been either reshuffled or has degenerated, but has not been added to.

  This is simply false. For example, the published count of alleles of ABO glycosyltransferase, the gene associated with the ABO blood types, is up to 29 so far. The three sons of Noah and their three wives only had a total of 12 copies of chromosome 9, where the gene is located, and even assuming maximum heterozygosity and no shared alleles between any of them, that still leaves 17 alleles that had to have arisen later. We know that Ken Ham is wrong both logically and empirically, and we also completely lack a magic mechanism that would simultaneously guarantee the purity of the original alleles inherited from the tiny Noachian population while simultaneously maximizing subsequent diversity to reach modern levels.

  Reading that site, it’s clear that they’ve just battened upon a few elementary genetic facts, and then abused them inappropriately to pretend that science supports them. Whenever they write “Modern genetics supports…” and then state some bizarre Biblical claim, they are lying.

  And then, of course, they end it all with an ironic twist, saying that the reason racism is a problem is that false claims are made about the origins of races, and then listing several cases of scientific racism. They conveniently leave out the fact that there were also Biblical justifications for slavery and racism, and that most scientists (and many Christians!) today deplore those distortions. We do not correct them by adding another layer of lies on top, though, as Answers in Genesis has done.

  • 9:19 am
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