Session 6 – Genetics, Races, and more In this final session we will be finishing up our study of Creation and the Flood by looking at Genetics We will look at the topic of “races” and the Biblical/scientific support for one race We will also look at evidence for Adam and Eve, Noah, and the Tower of Babel

While we don’t like the term race, it is helpful to understand what we’re discussing Where did races come from? A human race is a group of people with certain common inherited features that distinguish them from other groups of people While this idea does exist, there is only one species of human which anthropologists classify as Homo sapiens

The differences between the human “races” is extremely small (genetically), any one human can reproduce with any other human being, without problem Even though we may look different on the outside (skin color) that represents a very, very minor genetic difference between humans

(a) language (b) hair and facial features (c) skin color. This distinguishing feature is primarily due to difference in amount of the pigment, melanin, in the skin. The most significant difference between these races is: It’s pathetic that people have used these differences to justify cruel things

Where does the different skin colors come from around the world? Your skin color will be determined by the amount of melanin in your skin Melanin is produced by melanocytes, which are cells in the bottom layer of the epidermis Melanocytes insert melanin into melanosomes, which transfer it to skin cells, which are able to divide (in the lower regions of the epidermis)

According to one expert “The melanosomes (tiny melanin-packaging units) are slightly larger and more numerous per cell in dark-skinned than light skinned people. They also do not degrade as readily, and disperse into adjacent skin cells to a higher degree.” Ackerman, Histopathologic Diagnosis of Skin Diseases, Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1978, 44; Lever and Schamberg-Lever, Histopathology of the Skin, 7th Ed., J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1990, 18–20. Melanin protects your skin from harmful sunlight (UV rays)

For people who have lighter skin, a lot of the pigment is lost when these cells divide and their daughter cells move upward to form the surface layer of the epidermis We now know that 4-6 genes, each with multiple alleles (or variations), control the amount and type of melanin produced. Depending on your genetics, it’s not hard for one couple to produce a large range of skin colors in just the first generation

Genesis 3:20: “ The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Acts 17:26: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” The Bible is clear that all humans are related and of the same race, no one evolved differently and no ones less human or more human than others

Creation (Adam and Eve) and Genetics Here are two verses that the Bible gives us as we start looking into genetics “And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Gen 2:7

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.” Gen 2:21–22 These verses have quite the implications when dealing with genetics, it first shows us (along with other parts of the Bible) that the human race came from two people

Because Eve was created from the side of Adam (rib probably) there is a strong possibility that Eve was a genetic clone (like identical twins) with Adam (can’t be proven though) All God would have to do is switch Adams Y chromosomes to an X, and we would have a twin of Adam (except female)

We are left with two possibilities, there is either one or two original genomes that we are dealing with Your genome is like an encyclopedia, and is divided into volumes (chromosomes). You have two identical copies of each volume, except for the X or Y chromosome (men have one of each, women have two X’s) Imagine comparing two volumes, and finding a tiny difference in spelling somewhere

If Eve was a copy of Adam genetically, you have (at most) two possible variations at any point in the genome If Eve was not a genetic clone of Adam, then you would have at most four possible variations at any point This would limit the readings to 2, 3, or 4 originals possible, although new mutations and changes can come in over time since the creation of the genome

“Does this fit the evidence? Absolutely! Most variable places in the genome come in two versions and these versions are spread out across the world. There are some highly variable places that seem to contradict this, but most of these are due to mutations that occurred in the different subpopulations after Babel.” – Dr. Robert Carter There is some evidence that Eve may have not been a clone of Adam

There are three main blood types, A, B, O However, many, but not all, people with type O blood carry something that looks very much like a mutant A This is an example of a gene with more than two versions, but one of the main versions is clearly a mutation (which means it could have started with just two)

Noah, the Flood, and Genetics We have a few verses to look at here: “So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood.” Gen 7:7 “Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth… These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.” Gen 9:18–19

About 10 generations after Creation, a severe, short bottleneck occurred in the human population. From untold numbers of people, the entire world population was reduced to eight souls with only three reproducing couples. This gives us a framework though when dealing with Genetics

For example, when we look at the flood account, how many Y chromosome lines should we expect after the flood? The answer: One (because the three sons of Noah would all have Noah’s Y chromosome) Unless there was a mutation (which is entirely possible), each of the sons carried the exact same Y chromosome. We don’t know exactly how much mutation took place before the flood

With the long life spans of the pre flood patriarchs, we wouldn’t expect too much mutation to happen before the flood At the same time, the entire creation (including the human genome) was cursed and affected by sin Either way, most of this mutation would have been erased in the bottle neck that took place at the time of the flood

How many mitochondrial DNA lineages would we expect on the ark? Answer: Three There were three daughters in law of Noah, and they were the ones who repopulated the world (which means we’d have three main X- Chromosome lines from pre flood survive) One of these daughters could have been Noah’s daughter (sibling marriage wasn’t banned yet, at most we’d expect 3 lineages)

Does this fit the genetic evidence that we find around the world? It turns out that Y chromosomes are similar worldwide. According to evolution, no “ancient” (highly mutated or highly divergent) Y chromosomes have been found. Evolution has ways they try to explain these discoveries (with other lineages dying out) but the Bible fits the data extremely well (with one main Y chromosome line)

The evidence from mitochondrial (X Chromosome) DNA fits our model just as nicely as the Y chromosome data We now know that there are three main mitochondrial (X Chromosome) DNA lineages found across the world They are labeled (by evolutionists) as “M”, “N”, and “R”, and fit very well with the Biblical account of three daughters in law going on the ark and reproducing afterwards

It also turns out that these three lineages are only separated by a few mutations (which give us an idea of how much mutation was going on before the flood) M and N are separated by about 8 mutations (a small fraction of the 16,500 letters in the mitochondrial genome). R is only 1 mutation away from N (which has some implications) It’s possible that R and N are closely related, because they are not very different

“One more line of evidence crops up in the amount of genetic diversity that has been found within people worldwide. Essentially, much less has been found than most (i.e., evolutionists!) predicted.” Dr. Robert Carter This is one reason that the evolutionists have a massive bottle neck happen within their own theories, where the human population goes through a disastrous that drops between 1,000-10,000 in the recent past

How do we explain this little diversity? First, the human genome is relatively young (starting with Adam and Eve) Second, it begins with only two people (Adam and Eve) which limits the amount of variation possible Third, we have a bottle neck (like they do) that happened at the time of the flood (we thought of it first though)

The Tower of Babel and Genetics We have a few verses that deal with this “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.” Gen 11:1 “And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” Gen 11:4

Babel explains quite a bit among cultures, like why a lot of them have similar legends (flood legends) or building ideas (Pyramids) and the rise of different languages At the point of Babel when all people are living in the same area, you would expect a lot of intermarriage between the lines God had commanded them to spread out over the world, but they did the exact opposite

Because of this God takes matters into his own hands “’Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.” Gen 11:7–8 When did this dispersion take place from the tower of Babel

The best indication that we have of when Babel takes place is in Genesis 10:25 Genesis 10:25: “To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.” Peleg was in the 5 th generation of the children of Shem There is some debate as to what “the earth was divided” means in this passage

One idea is this refers to a division of land masses (plate tectonics) after the flood That is a possibility, but it would mean a LOT of plate tectonic movement happened after the flood during historical times, but we don’t have historical sources of this Another theory is that the earth being divided was referring to the tower of Babel, when the people were split into different languages are spread out around the world

There are 16 named sons born to the three brothers, Shem, Ham and Japheth. If we assume about the same number of daughters, Noah had around 30 grandchildren. At that rate of growth, there would have been about 150 children in Salah’s generation, about 750 in Eber’s generation, and about 3,750 in Peleg’s generation. Although they still lived longer at that point, so this doesn’t take into account overlap

We can assume somewhere between 3,000- 5,000 people were alive at the time of Babel There is one more verse to look at: “These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.” Gen 10:32 Do you see the implications in this verse?

At Babel, God did not organize and split people up according to their language, he used language to split them into their paternal (male) ancestors Paternal sorting would lead to specific Y chromosome lineages in different geographical locations Since males and females should have been freely intermixing prior to the division, it would lead to a mixing of X lineages

It’s as if God put all the people into a computer program and hit a button called “Sort According to Father.” He then divided the nations based on that list. We saw that Y chromosomes are very similar around the world, and the difference we do observe is geographical. This makes sense because at the tower of Babel the male lines would have been distributed around the world

Mitochondrial DNA gives us a different picture though genetically (which we’d expect from the Biblical account) The mtDNA is more randomly distributed around the world, which makes sense because Babel was not organized by mtDNA The different mutations in each of the three groups is also geographically specific, different strands of mtDNA acquires mutations in different areas as it moves

Many people today think that things like genetics give evidence against the Bible When we examine it though, we see that it provides strong confirmation of the Biblical account of creation and the flood Like all other topics, there is a lot more depth we could get into when dealing with Genetics, don’t let your study stop here!

Memory Verse Acts 17:26: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth”