Creationists on race

The only answer to racism is ... to lie about humanity and the evidence.

That couldn't be counterproductive, could it be?

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Trinity will be here with their apologetics and lies soon.

Ken Ham is simply lying.

And raping piglets

wikipedia Henry Morris:

Morris wrote that the descendants of Ham "possibly" include "all of the earth's 'colored' races". Morris wrote that they have been "[p]ossessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters" compared to the "Japhethites" who have a comparatively "intellectual and philosophical acumen".[17]

Some xian creationist are racists. Henry Morris who claimed evolution was invented by satan and handed to Nimrod at the Tower of Babel also believed in Mark-of-Hamism.

The answer to racism is integration. What race is Tiger Woods?

The human race is rapidly becoming brown, as racial lines everywhere get thoroughly mixed. And this is the best possible outcome for humanity in innumerable ways.

It should be obvious from a genetic perspective, but it should also be obvious from a social perspective. How can a hypothetical kid who’s 3/8 African (from five different parts of the continent), 1/4 Asian (from three different parts of the continent), 1/4 American (from both Mesoamerica and South America); and 1/8 European (from half of the EU member states) in any way pretend to be justified in any form of racism? And, oh-by-the-way, what race is she?

(The answer, if it isn’t obvious, is, “human.”)

Cheers,

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

Nice 5-part series from the Beeb, The Incredible Human Journey. It's available from... er, unauthorized sources if it's not up on youtube/etc.

Bonus: Alice Roberts is a hottie

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.

Bets that in Ken Ham's conception of race, caucasian is the baseline and the African and Asian races are the result of degenerations?

So they're saying a bunch of gray people left the ark and then somehow split into black and white? Can we please shout something about the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

the sad part is, that they acknowledge the fact of mutation, but state, that mutation is only degenerative.

In Genesis 4.17 it says that Cain, (Adam & Eve's son) built a city, not a village, a city, & named it after his son, Enoch.

How could he build a city when there were only his Ma & Pa, wife & son, especially as he was banished from his parents anyway?

What a load of feckin' crap the bible is. Ken Ham is a feckin' eejit.

The curse of Ham strikes again !

Really, I'm beginning to think that Ken Ham spoke badly of his dad, long ago, and that, as a punishment, he was afflicted with a curse : from now opn, he would only talk BS...

I thought race was an entirely social construction?

I may be embarrassing myself here but surely Noah's three sons can only have genes that came from their mum and dad. Doesn't that means that the post flood gene pool is even smaller with just five individuals?

Doesn't really matter of course as the whole thing is nuts.

""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."

Hey! As someone who has friends and aquaintances who went to actual clown and circus colleges, I resent any association implied between their training and AiG!

(no, really...I do have circus friends - and they are rational atheist types)

"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."

- Bulworth (1998)

All this is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that the "races" they talk about on the site are unbelievably and laughably inaccurate. There's no such people as "black people" or "white people" except as a sociological construct, which is largely a novel and North American invention.

Oh Ken Ham, are you addicted to being wrong? We should get you some rehab.

The entire site is really a rather silly attempt to pretend that racial prejudice has its roots in evolutionary science.

Oh! What an eden was destroyed by Darwin!

One of the biggest justifications for racial discrimination in modern times is the belief that people groups have evolved separately. Thus, different groups are at allegedly different stages of evolution, and so some people groups are more backward than others...

Sadly, some Christians have been infected with racist thinking through evolutionary indoctrination that people of a different "color" are inferior because they are supposedly closer to the animals.

I seem to remember covering this in one of my first year modules, but I can't remember whether it was Biol104 - Apes and Darkies: Our animal cousins, or Biol107: Practical genocide skills and the application of eugenics...

The poisonous influence of science corrupting religion can clearly be seen in the fact that university towns tend to be the most illiberal places on the planet, whereas the Bible belt is well known for its historical opposition to racism and racist ideas.

The Bible makes it clear that any newly "discovered" tribe ultimately goes back to Noah. They are not a group of people who have never had superior technology or knowledge of God in their culture. Rather, their culture (going back to Noah) began with (a) a knowledge of God, and (b) technology at least sufficient to build a boat of ocean-liner size. Romans chapter 1 suggests the major reason for this technological loss and cultural degeneration. It is linked to the deliberate rejection by their ancestors of the worship of the living God.

Therefore, the first priority in helping a "backward" people group should not be secular education and technical aid, but first and foremost the gospel.

(Because quotemarks make my superiority complex acceptible.)

I love the racist, imperialist subtextual irony on display.

These people don't need antibiotics and clean water, they need to find God before the amoebic dysentery kills them and their savage ways condemn them to hell.

Talk about technological and cultural degeneration in the context of isolated aboriginal groups? This from a group of people with only the most banale insight into their own stagnant culture, who would proably last all of five minutes in a rain forest or island environment (even with their superior technology).

...technology imagination at least sufficient to build write a work of fiction about a boat of ocean-liner size...

Fixed.

The only answer to racism is: "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color." Thanks Bullworth!

Hey! As someone who has friends and aquaintances who went to actual clown and circus colleges, I resent any association implied between their training and AiG!

Me too. Dated a real, live, honest-to-goodness clown. She often travels to South Africa and Lesotho with Clowns Without Borders, but even if she spent her life sitting in a basement somewhere she'll have done more good in the world than that piece of shite Ken Ham, may-his-goat-beard-be-forever-plagued-with-mange.

So, call them some other kind of college. Because clowns are respectable.

Satire from ex-mormons:

Recent DNA evidence shows that some Europeans have Neanderthal forefathers. The study shows that 1% to 4% of European genetic makeup comes from Neanderthal bloodlines: Neanderthal DNA found in humans
     Church leaders hope that these Neanderthal ancestors can be identified so that their names can be added to the temple list for Baptism for the Dead. Utah officals predict the number of Neanderthals who posthumously accept Mormonism to quadruple the number of LDS spirit world conversions.
     Utah officials admit it won’t be easy baptizing dead Neanderthals. One leader who spoke on the condition of anonymity said “honestly, we don’t know the names of all Neanderthals that were mating with humans from 100,000 B.C. to 30,000 B.C., but our prophet has revealed there are many long time spirit world inhabitants who caved in after seeing the DNA study. We’re grateful to our Heavenly Father for finally providing a situation where DNA is helping us.”...

http://coventryrm.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/can-neanderthals-become-morm…

In Genesis 4.17 it says that Cain, (Adam & Eve's son) built a city, not a village, a city, & named it after his son, Enoch.
How could he build a city when there were only his Ma & Pa, wife & son, especially as he was banished from his parents anyway?

I'm presuming the Land of Nod is where the Neanderthals were.

No, really, it makes perfect sense. If we presume that Eden was somewhere in Africa, then Cain went "east of Eden" into the Middle East, and got it on with cave(wo)men. Scientists have now found "the mark of Cain" in our DNA, as was just recently reported.

Of course, that makes native Africans, who don't have Neanderthal DNA, closer to Adam and Eve, which no doubt would blow the minds of most US creationists, but hey, you can't deny the evidence!

So they're saying a bunch of gray people left the ark and then somehow split into black and white? Can we please shout something about the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

OK, so assume Noah was white... now, if we shine white light through a prism we get all sorts of different colours without actually adding any information.
Doesn't genetic inheritance and mutation work in a similar way - as long as you start from white? I'm sure that it does... Maybe.
(I'm getting the image of trying to force a sperm through a prism & it isn't pretty)

bpesta I thought race was an entirely social construction?

Race is a social construction. As with gender, there are obviously biological phenomena underlying this social construction, but the connection is pretty tenuous. Knowing someone is black tells you very little about their genetic background. Knowing someone is Ashkenazi does, but that confluence of racial identity and biological population is, I think, something of an outlier. (Also, depending on the situation, Ashkenazi Jews may be racially coded as ?Ashkenazi,? ?white,? ?Jewish,? etc, which would be variously useful or not in making assumptions about which biological populations they fit into.)

I'm presuming the Land of Nod is where the Neanderthals were.
No, really, it makes perfect sense. If we presume that Eden was somewhere in Africa, then Cain went "east of Eden" into the Middle East, and got it on with cave(wo)men. Scientists have now found "the mark of Cain" in our DNA, as was just recently reported.
Of course, that makes native Africans, who don't have Neanderthal DNA, closer to Adam and Eve, which no doubt would blow the minds of most US creationists, but hey, you can't deny the evidence!

Sounds about right. If they're really not bigots, they should have no problem accepting their new status as less favoured in God's eyes.

OK, so assume Noah was white

As new mutations can only be degenerative rather than building new things I'd guess under fairyland logic that Noah was black and that a mutation down the line knocked out melanin production.

Ben Goren

How can a hypothetical kid who’s 3/8 African (from five different parts of the continent), 1/4 Asian (from three different parts of the continent), 1/4 American (from both Mesoamerica and South America); and 1/8 European (from half of the EU member states) in any way pretend to be justified in any form of racism? And, oh-by-the-way, what race is she?

I think I know this kid..
Seriously though,you should visit Mozambique. More than other ex-colonised African countries, Moz has a huge "mixed race" population being varying degrees of Portugeuse-African-Chinese-East Indian-Greek. Almost no one has four grandparents of vaguely the same colouring. And I must say it makes for some seriously delicious looking people.

According to the babble, it took Moses and his merry band 40 years to walk from Egypt to Israel - a distance of about 265 miles with just the Red Sea in the way (which was reportedly parted in a most magically delicious manner for an easy crossing). So, how many generations do they propose it would take for at least one breeding pair of humans to travel the 9500 miles or so it would take to reach the Americas? And why does the babble not mention how they got across the ocean to do so? It seems to me that it would take a "miracle" at least 100 times greater than the Red Sea spectacle to put a crease in the Pacific. You'd think their sky wizard would want some major buzz in the press for that one.

re 27:

it took Moses and his merry band 40 years to walk from Egypt to Israel - a distance of about 265 miles ...

But that's because God thought it would be fun to lead them around in circles for 40 years. IIRC it was punishment for that "golden calf" incident at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

GrahamH@13:

I may be embarrassing myself here but surely Noah's three sons can only have genes that came from their mum and dad. Doesn't that means that the post flood gene pool is even smaller with just five individuals?

You're quite right. Not only that, there can be only one Y chromosome in the world (Noah's), only eight X chromosomes (at most two each from the four women, assuming Mrs. Noah contributed all her X alleles to some combination of her three sons, probably unlikely), and only three mitochondrial genomes (from the three sons' wives).

Obviously, the Y chromosome is the best one. There can be no variant Y alleles in the human population. Should be easy to test that, and I assume that baraminologists are even now busy in the lab.

hehe mormons: I hereby dunk Ugg in baptism. Yay Ugg. And next we get Ringo into the tub and I volunteer to help Barbara Bach into the hottub (even still).

But enough of the clowning: is the nexus of m9, m20, and m45 coming out of Kashmir(?) a real phenomenon or just a mapping relic? Is there some big ancient population center in that area that no one told me about or what is the deal there?
Or is it just the road coming out of the fertile crescent as m9 and m9 not being a discrete event and m9.1 went north and then m9.2 sometime later but with mostly the same allele set went east or where can I get an explanation of the map info?

IIRC it was punishment for that "golden calf" incident at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm golden calf steaks

/homer

Should be easy to test that, and I assume that baraminologists are even now busy in the lab engrossed in contemplation of their navels.

Corrected a typo.

I never listen to the batshit insane rantings of religious people on the origins of "race", except when I'm in the mood to point and laugh. It is fun, though, when they try to use science to support their batshit insane theories, and I enjoy pointing out to them that 1) They have provisionally accepted parts of the TOE, but 2) really botched the parts they accepted.

My wife and I are from different "races", and what I tell my kids is, It's just a paint job.

If you like red Corvettes, chances are you'll like blue ones, too. Although I'm personally more of a Honda guy. Hope that doesn't make me racist.

With religion, though, I really don't see why they simply stick with this: We can't understand all of God's wise ways. We trust the Bible, and our omniscient God can literally do anything, and nothing requires an explanation.

Note that I clearly do not subscribe to this line of thinking at all. Just sayin', if your God is all-powerful, like the Wizard of The Universe, then "We can't explain everything" becomes perfectly valid. The problems inevitably arise when they try to mix wizardry with science. Every time they do this, they cause themselves problems, and then they deny it. I really don't know why they can't just stick to one line: "God did it."

I may be embarrassing myself here but surely Noah's three sons can only have genes that came from their mum and dad. Doesn't that means that the post flood gene pool is even smaller with just five individuals?

5, 8, both are too small for a viable gene pool. There was a "Science Channel" (or similar) show a while ago about space colonization and one part was estimating the minimum population of couples required to form a viable genetic colony on a "one-way" mission. I think it was about 100 couples would provide enough diversity to avoid genetic problems.

Their phobia of mutations that add function is weird. But I suppose if they allowed that, they'd have to allow that a Creator isn't necessary.

I thought race was an entirely social construction?

Variation in allele frequency between populations is a biological phenomenon. "Race" is a socially constructed system of rough categorizations based on a small subset of the phenotypic differences engendered by that variation.

@GrahamH and John Harshman

Well, obviously there's only one conclusion. At least one or more of Noah's son's was adopted, or the conception of at least one of his sons coincided with the visit of Joe, the itinerant adze salesman.

re #34

I think it was about 100 couples would provide enough diversity to avoid genetic problems.

No problem. Just add a bunch more cubits to the dimensions of the ark and....oops...but then the babble would be in error.

does not compute....does not compute.....ffzzzt......

From the link

We prefer to call these "people groups" rather than "races," to avoid the evolutionary connotations associated with the word "race."

Evolutionary connotations of "race"? All original concepts of race come from religious sources and such classifications only entered the scientific venue when natural explanations for differences between people were sought. If not for science, race would remain a legit concept originating from religiuos myths.

The entire site is really a rather silly attempt to pretend that racial prejudice has its roots in evolutionary science.

Oh! What an eden was destroyed by Darwin! - Bernard Bumner

Scientific opposition to evolutionary theory was led in the USA by Louis Agassiz and his fellow polygenists, who claimed the "races" were separate creations.

I really don't know why they can't just stick to one line: "God did it."

There was a character (played by Geoffrey Rush) in "Shakespeare in Love", who, whenever asked a "hard" question (like, "where are we going to find a Juliet at this point?") would answer "I don't know. It's a mystery." I just thought that was a great answer.

I think that site is excellent evidence that there truly is a Curse of Ham. (But not bacon, of course.)

- Bulworth (1998)

Heh.

I've been noticing this move by the racists a lot lately. They want to support white supremacy, but the election of Barack Obama has really unsettled their long-held notions that the secret heart of "Real America" would triumphantly continue to hold. As such, they've been flailing around for new justifications beyond the usual code words.

At the core of this seems to be making some reaching out to the acknowledgment that what is sociologically race and what is biologically race are two separate phenomenon and more critically the short-hand (that what we call race is a cultural artifact) to try and deny that race and therefore racism don't exist.

This is to argue that furthermore any discussion of racism or racial inequality is what is actually racism and thus blacks and white civil rights supporters are the real racists and let's pass a law allowing us to round up everyone brown.

I don't think it's fooling anyone besides themselves though, because everyone else can sort of see that a cultural phenomenon that shares some rudimentary scientific bases doesn't somehow cease to be or create a color-blind future. Same with their other ploy, "post-racial Obama America" where apparently Obama promised everyone that racism would end if he was elected president so no one can talk about race or racism ever again.

In short, the bigots are hunting for new code words now that the Southern Strategy is starting to fall apart and AiG is trying to add their pseudo-science desperate cross to the box.

There are other explanations - the TV preacher I watch in the early morning claims that God created all the races separately (because you can't make black from white etc) and they were all on the ark together but didn't get the same amount of press. Noah's family was the only "Abrahamic" race of people though.

I ordered my genetic mapping too - from another company 23andme.com. The output and reports are a little different but the process is similar and the product pretty cool stuff: paternal line, maternal line, ancestry map, etc. Wife and I have a bet on who's line has more surprises in it... we're both pretty plain.

There are other explanations - the TV preacher I watch in the early morning claims that God created all the races separately (because you can't make black from white etc) and they were all on the ark together but didn't get the same amount of press. Noah's family was the only "Abrahamic" race of people though.

And where exactly does he get this bit of unpublished information? The collectors edition?

He's got the director's cut with the deleted scenes.

According to the babble, it took Moses and his merry band 40 years to walk from Egypt to Israel - a distance of about 265 miles with just the Red Sea in the way

Well, how many men do you know who stop to ask for directions?

...Louise Agassiz and his fellow polygenists, who claimed the "races" were separate creations.

Scientisim - all the taste of science, but only one calorie.

woo hoo Bible, Director's Cut. With even more sex and violence and answers to all your questions.

Like: who else was stowed away on the ark and
what's with the unicorns anyway. And if boffing your cousin is an abomination, why did god make it necessary on at least two occasions?

With special edition back stage pictures and commentary.

Find out why the explanation for germs and disease ended up on the cutting room floor and what was god's problem with his own rules. Why did Jesus get a red card? And why was god fucking with Jacob and Job?

It is always declared that Moses and the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years (even though Israel was a brisk 5 days walk from Egypt). But if you read the Pentateuch carefully, they actually wandered for only TWO years. According to Deuteronomy, they eventually came to Kadeshbarnea, and hung around there for thirty-eight years until the last of the original men of war had died off. But it is still confusing. Did they just come to Kadeshbarnea, hang out for awhile and resume wandering for 38 more years? An inquiring mind needs to know.

Curse this thread! I now have that old Blue Mink song stuck in my head:

"What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all it's got
And keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out coffee coloured people by the score"

@49, boffing your cousin is nothing. Cain, son of Adam & Eve, had a wife. And they had a son, Enoch. So he must've boffed his sister. I guess another alternative is that he had another brother that didn't get mentioned, just like the daughters don't get mentioned, & ... ahhh, it's just too feckin' stupid.

@ #51

Great, thanks. Now I have to frikken go out for coffee!

ya know i tried to put my two cents in on you tube about the genetic evidence for evolution.i forgot how that can be twisted by creationists to support the bible. dammit! now i have to do a clarification don't i?

The human race is rapidly becoming brown, as racial lines everywhere get thoroughly mixed.

Nope. That's not how inheritance works. When gleaming white and pitch-black people love each other very much, the next generation will be uniformly middle brown, but then it gets complicated. The parents' phenotypes can and do reappear. Google for "black-and-white twins".

(Because quotemarks make my superiority complex acceptible.)

I think you misunderstand. The idea is that they're not backward, but forward, towards H-E-double-hockey-sticks, away from God, away from the conservative values that they should have conserved, and the proudly reactionary cretinists want to turn them backward.

Still, the idea of a single human race is sound, and becoming moreso. At least to my best knowledge, if you look at the entire human race, there is not enough variability between 'races', not genetically and not morphologically. There's too much overlap.

So we are a single human race.

Of course their arguments are totally bullocks.

Why would an omniscient and omnipotent god even fucking bother to create us. he already knows what we will do all the time, he is the one that made it thus, so why pretend that anything matters?
If I was god, what possible motivation could I have to produce any scenario that is nothing but old news from the beginning? I would commit suicide just to escape the boredom.
the only conclusion is that, besides being insufferable stupid, either god doesn't know everything, or he is hanging from a rope.

Well, how many men do you know who stop to ask for directions?

It might be more a case of asking for directions too much, blindly following that pillar of smoke and fire that was leading them about in circles, and never sending out scout parties which should, by the end of year five at the lastest, have pretty much mapped out the entire desert. . . .

Maybe they were too spooked by that petulant tantrum on the slopes of Sinai after the golden calf incident to take any initiative.

Another explanation I heard somewhere but can't remember where was that the 40 years were part of the plan to breed up a big enough army to do all that scorched earth genocide stuff they do in the Book of Joshua.

There was a character (played by Geoffrey Rush) in "Shakespeare in Love", who, whenever asked a "hard" question (like, "where are we going to find a Juliet at this point?") would answer "I don't know. It's a mystery."

Apropos of nothing much, that character was Philip Henslowe, who was a real person, and really was a theatre manager in Shakespeare's day. His so-called "diary" is essentially the accounts, notes, and other assorted day-to-day details of the running of a theatre of the era. It's almost the only source of information we now have on the theatrical business of the time.

It's not known if Shakespeare ever worked with/for Henslowe. (That was—compared to what we know—a pure invention in the movie.) Some of Shakespeare's plays are mentioned in the "diary". It's highly probable they knew of each other, but what each thought of the other is, well, a mystery.

If my recollection is correct, the real Henslowe also ran some brothel(s?), and an animal-baiting show/site. (I have no idea if he did at the time of the movie (c.1593).)

The ABO group issue with Noah's family is not nearly so bad as the issue with Adam and Eve: they would have needed some strange front-loaded arrangement of multiple deactivated variants and a single activated variant of the ABO group genes and hundreds more.

If true, we should see some vestiges of that in the population today: some copies should still be around - not the copied-and-modified ones that almost all humans share (like the various rhodopsins), but the alternates required to carry all that variety with no new "information".

How about it, creation science?

I think it was about 100 couples would provide enough diversity to avoid genetic problems.

But what about the possible Mineshaft Gap?

Silliness aside, the “40 years” clearly wasn’t meant to be taken literally by the authors. Instead, 40 is one of those magic numbers in ancient judaism; see the whole “40 days and 40 nights it rained” thing. It’s no more remarkable than the fact that there were seven dwarves attending Snow White or that Jesus had twelve disciples.

Cheers,

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

What?

Accept a body of facts (because not accepting them is screamingly, obviously stupid), but then deny the conclusions logically DRAWN from those facts?

Naw. Never happen.

...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.

Outright disproof. Wow. Usually creationists can retreat by adding ever more bizarre epicycles to their theories, but this really leaves the baraminologists with nowhere to retreat. Either humanity descends from a population > 9 or there are novel variations in human genetics or (as it happens) both.

"But wait: there are no people who can be distinguished by skin color, by ethnicity and history?" Actually, I am willing to accept this. Race is a social category and gets really messy when people are shoved into these odd little categories. And, race changes over time and region (oh, yes). For example, some southern states prior to the civil rights movement would not have allowed me to put white on my passport. I am extremely pale with blond hair, blue eyes, and a somewhat southern rural accent, but I am too Cherokee to meet what would have been allowed for many segregated univeristies. I am also definitively not white under Nazi standards. The new census also considers me Hispanic, because one set of great granparents immigrated from
Spain. So, on my census I am white, hispanic, and cherokee, but socially I am white because of my light skin and the fact that my parents are both the lightest of their siblings (I have one uncle who favours the Cherokee features and never passes as white, though he gets Latino often).

Back in the day, social services and orphanages used to panic about the 'race' or abandoned babies because they thought it was crucial to know the ancestory of these kids before they decided how to treat them.

Arabs used to be white on census and government forms, now they often are their own distinct 'race', due to anti-arab sentiment in the US.

So, yeah, in many ways it is the being singled out that creates the 'race', not features.

What about our 1 - 4% neanderthal DNA? Mixing with other skin colors pales in comparison.

Oh come on guys, I think it's pretty obvious what happened. Noah was bored and drunk off his ass and raped one of the monkeys. What!!? It can't be racist if it's based on the bible! /s

(actually given the bible's track record in regards to wimmenz and their, uh, weaknesses... the official explanation would be closer to: Noah's wife couldn't control her libidinous urges and seduced one of the gorillas. It's no more fucking insane than any of the other shit they try to justify...)

I think it's actually 10 copies of chromosome 9. If Noah had 2 and his wife had 2 different ones, then the three sons should have at most shared 4 between them, and their 3 wives could have had an addition 6 total.

But then, given that polygamy was encouraged in the bible, Noah's three sons might each have had different mothers (maybe they were wicked and didn't get a ticket on the ark, or perhaps they died before the flud). So the three sons could have had a total of 5 chromosome nines between them (both of Noah's two different ones, and a different one for each from their different mother's). Now let's say that Noah' wife (the ark wife) is new, a young nubile trophy wife, with 2 more unique chromosomes of her own, and sufficient youth and fertility to pass them on after the recession of the waters. That brings us up to 13 chromosomes and 4 mitochondrial genomes. Still just one Y.

But wait! What if Noah had been too busy with his visions of cubits and his adventures is boat design to mind the store, and got cuckholded, and all three of his sons were not actually biologically his, with 3 separate fathers (this might explain why their sinning moms didn't make it onto the ark!). Now no one in that family is actually related to any one else, and we get 16 autosomes, 4 mitochondria, and 4 Y's.

Oh, and Noah had one named grandson, if I recall. I don't think it explicitly says that he was born after the flud, so let's suppose that he was born (make that conceived - he was a fetus during the entirety of the flud and that's why he was not mentioned as a separate individual on the ark) before. In fact, let's have all four of the ark women pregnant, and let's say those four fetuses had fathers that were NOT the ark men. This does raise the question of how the women got allowed by the Big Kahuna onto the arc, but we can solve that be supposing they were all recently widowed (but pregnant!) prior to their marriage into Noah's family, which was just prior to the flud. I think there are rituals that allow for such unions to be made acceptable....

That'll give us four extra autosomes and 4 extra Y's, making the final count 22 autosomes, 4 mitochondria and 8 Y's.

Hmm. Still doesn't get us to 29
ABO glycosyltransferase alleles.

So maybe the 7 extra chromosomes came from the 7 Neanderthals that were also on the ark but not specifically mentioned (Neanderthals being ritually clean and all).

Except that one of each of the ritually clean animals had to be sacrificed after it was over, which puts us short one, unless at least one of the neanderthal women was also pregnant (and the father of the fetus NOT on the ark). . . .

Aha! Paradox solved.

Or maybe Noah's family was all tetraploid.

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.

It's worse than that, they all come from Adam and Eve (and did Eve have the same DNA as Adam, having come from his rib and all that? I can't seem to find that information in Genesis.)

But the argument just carries on giving: (from OneHumanRace.com and following creationist tradition)

"It is interesting to note that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe, recognized as fully human, [...]"

So not only does Adam have to account for the entire Homo sapiens gene pool, but also for a species* half-way to being a chimp**. Just what did Adam look like? and that's some wacky selective breeding that he must have imposed on his offspring.

* yes, I know, I know. But they are clearly 'not the same as us' on the DNA level whatever your interpretation.

** not intending any slur on the chimpanzee genome, but that _is_ different.

Well, how many men do you know who stop to ask for directions?

I once met a very good friend of mine in the North Beach area of San Francisco (Green St, as I now recall). We decided to go to the Modern Art Museum (a bit SE of Union Square), and to walk. So we set in a vaguely SE-direction towards Union Square. I was happy to wander in the right general direction, pointing out that we couldn't get too lost—when confused, don't go uphill and head towards that blue stuff—but she insisted we track our progress/position on a map.

So, yeah, maps are for girls…  ;-)

#68 also means, of course, that the alleles of ABO glycosyltransferase prove, THEOLOGICALLY, that a fetus does NOT count has a human being.

Of course, a close reading of the bible already demonstrates that the worth of a fetus is approximately that of one cow. (That being the bibilically sanctioned penalty/compensation for accidentally causing a miscarriage)

#68- No need to worry why cuckolding daughter-in-laws might have made it onto the ark but not Noah's least favorite wives. Noah had probably been a widower three or four times over.

I don't know, but I think that since God intended Noah and his family to be the chosen survivors, He could easily work his wizardry and ensure that races came from Noah's desendents. So God sneaks into the bedroom at night, blesses someone's gonads, and humans just can't understand what that is they're seeing.

They didn't even have microscopes.

So if one of Noah's grandkids turns out to be what we now call Chinese or Polish or Greek or Palestinian, that's fine. The Big Wizard just needs to say "poof", and all things are possible.

See how it works?

In Chapter 1, God creates&trade an unspecified number of humans, male and female, and instructs them to be fruitful and multiply (which, presumably, they do).

In Chapter 2, God notices that there is no one tilling the ground. (Given the instructions in Chapter 1, He should have expected this.) So he makes Dirt-boy and Rib-girl. Cain got his wife from the Chapter 1 people. Seth (130 years later) would have had many, many Chapter 1-ers to choose for his wife.

Wait...this is about Noah et al. or was it race?

Tower of Babel!
God confused their tongues! The various tongues would have become genetically isolated because, as everyone knows, not speaking the same language presents an insurmountable barrier to sexual intercourse. Right?

re 70:

Asking directions is not at all the same as reading a map. And yes, I am a man who will not ask for directions (but does not often get lost either).

Race is a construct to try to justify one's group superiority over another.

#71

Of course, a close reading of the bible already demonstrates that the worth of a fetus is approximately that of one cow. (That being the bibilically sanctioned penalty/compensation for accidentally causing a miscarriage)

Well, at most one cow. You also have to account for the distress to the mother (and father), possible health implications, any loss of labor the child would have provided (though, given that you don't have to raise them, that might be considered a wash), and so forth.

Amphiox #68

I think it's actually 10 copies of chromosome 9. If Noah had 2 and his wife had 2 different ones, then the three sons should have at most shared 4 between them, and their 3 wives could have had an addition 6 total.
But then, given that polygamy was encouraged in the bible, Noah's three sons might each have had different mothers ... Now let's say that Noah' wife (the ark wife) is new, a young nubile trophy wife, with 2 more unique chromosomes of her own ...
(many more possible additions mentioned, skipped)
...
So maybe the 7 extra chromosomes came from the 7 Neanderthals that were also on the ark but not specifically mentioned (Neanderthals being ritually clean and all).

No, they came from the maidservants and animal handlers Noah brought along. Servants didn't count in listings of family members. Maybe Noah had the traditional 72 nubile virgins along as bedwarmers.

Now you've got chromosomes to spare; problem solved.

(Somehow I don't think Ham would go for any of these suggestions.)

i like to think of us a different breeds rather than races.

is that technically wrong? can race/breed be used interchangeably

Throughout the site, the Hamites constantly make this kind of dishonest argument

Nice appropriation of "Hamite". It works well in this context, as it brings to mind the old Christian idea that different races were descended from different sons of Noah. There were the Japhethites (Europeans and sometimes East Asians), the Semites (Jews and Arabs) and the Hamites (Africans). I have no idea where they thought everyone else came from.

Let's not forget that Ham was cursed for seeing his father naked, and that this was used as a justification for enslaving his putative descendants. But remember, kids, those weren't true Christians, and racism is actually rooted in science, not faith.

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

...would mean one of Noah's sons wasn't his son.

@#50.
Yup, plus it's always said that Moses parted teh Red Sea, but the 15 references to this in the Torah just say a "sea". The authors would have known where to have their legend cross the Sinai and avoid the Red, so the "sea" could be anywhere though many bible footnotes say it was the "Sea of Reeds".

Bonus comandment: Anybody who works on Saturday shall be put to death.
Exodus 31:15

"Ken Ham is simply lying."

I am Jill's total lack of surprise.

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.

I love this, but Ham still clings to physically impossible things like a global flood and a 6,000-year-old universe created in six days. Alleles are the least of his problems.

"Yes, over here. Hi... umm... hi. In Episode BF-12 you were battling barbarians while riding a winged Appaloosa. Yet, in the very next scene, my dear, you are clearly atop a winged Arabian. Please, do explain it?"

"Ahh, yeah. Well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it."

"I see. All right, yes. But in Episode AG-4...."

"Wizard!"

Funny if they depend on that Babel story, that they never identify where it actually was.

Ham & co don't even understand their Babble.

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"

The Babble doesn't say that God destroyed the Tower of Babel because the naughty people were disobeying any command to "fill the Earth". It says he did it because he was a psycho who thought humans were getting uppity.
They were already spread across the earth.
Genesis 11:1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

Then, later -
11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

@ #30
Don't know the answer to your questions, but here's an interactive Journey of Mankind that may interest you.

Yubal @ #81

...would mean one of Noah's sons wasn't his son.

MONKEY SEX! I knew it!!

My favorite Farside cartoon showed Moses and his wife in the desert. The Mrs. is saying: "But would you ask the burning bush for directions? No, not Mr. I'd Rather Wander The Desert For 40 Years."

Maybe all these extra alleles came from this lot -
Genesis 6:4
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men.

I expect to soon see Ham saying that these giant "sons of God" were the Neanderthals.
No idea how he'll explain the Babble saying that all these giants (and the Nephilim, the Emims, the Rephaites, the Anakims etc) were around before and after the Flood, but weren't on the Ark.

Well, here's something that's tangentially relevent. Some creationists are apparently troubled by the genetic similarity between humans and chimps:

The Chimpanzee Genome and the Problem of Biological Similarity

I find that creationist genomics requires three important theories that still need to be developed before fruitful research can commence. The first need is a theory of biological similarity. The level of similarity observed between the human and chimpanzee genomes cannot be adequately explained simply by the will of the Creator, unless a theory can be developed to explain why the Creator would will such similarity.

SteveM@75: Oops! You're right. That's what I get for reading/posting late at night, tired, after some vin, and when slightly preoccupied with other matters.

I rarely get badly lost, and the few times I do, it often winds up fairly amusing, such as the time I accidentally (really!) wandered into the red light district in Antwerpen. It was the middle of the day, business was obviously slow, so suddenly I was the focus of a lot of attention…

I can't recall the last time I asked for directions.

re 91:

I'm glad you caught the humor in my #75 that I didn't really give enough indication of. I am a total map-aholic and consider orienteering a mandatory skill of self-reliance. But occasionally everything fails and I will actually ask for directions.

As for Moses, I think that pillar of fire was just messin' with him.

This is the purest application of the Big Lie I've ever seen. Accusing science-minded people of being the racists.

What about the centuries of slavery (especially in the U.S.) before the appearance of Darwin's theory? It was all Bible-based justifications. And in the 1950's, the Klu Klux Klan was the definitely NOT the biggest promoter of Evolutionary Theory. A survey of Klan members or Klan history would show a desire for a White Christian Nation.

Uh, these idiots' point about skin color differences evolving in a few generations can be refuted with the most cursory of familiarity with southeast Asian history. We know from historical documents that the current inhabitants of southeast Asia have been living there for well over a thousand years, and archeological evidence suggests it is more like several thousand. And yet, their skin color is far too light to be optimal for that latitude.

Clearly, if it took only a few generations for these skin color differences to evolve, Vietnamese would be black (and for that matter, African-American families who had been living for a couple hundred years where I live in the wintry northeast -- it snowed here last weekend for chrissakes! -- would be white). They aren't, so these idiots must be wrong (as if we didn't know that already).

Perhaps a more plausible explanation is that they weren't the original inhabitants, that modern-day southeast Asians are the descendants of conquering peoples from further north. Oh wait, but there's no record of that in the Bible, so it can't be true. Drat, back to the drawing board...

Exactly how much faith can we put in the "Out of Africa" map above when it clearly leaves out the origins of three groups who've played a major, horrifying part in human history--

1. The Evil, Alien Esquimaux (Zeta Reticuli)

2. The Vile, Batrachian Manx (undersea, Innsmouthian lairs)

3. The Loathsome, Unhuman Andaman Islanders (Hell Dimensions ruled by Azathoth)

"It is interesting to note that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe, recognized as fully human, [...]"

So not only does Adam have to account for the entire Homo sapiens gene pool, but also for a species* half-way to being a chimp**.

The Neandertalers were nowhere near halfway to being chimps.

i like to think of us a different breeds rather than races.

Breeds are reproductively isolated. Human populations never have been, except for the Easter Islanders for a few hundred years and probably the native Tasmanians for several thousand.

Funny if they depend on that Babel story, that they never identify where it actually was.

In, you know, Babel? Babylon in Greek?

I expect to soon see Ham saying that these giant "sons of God" were the Neanderthals.

He can't, because the Neandertalers were distinctly shorter than most of us. More robust, yes, but shorter.