Cheryl

Michael, on your fourth post concerning Genetics:

You said: “I didn’t say that woman came first or that Ross believes this. I said that scientific research suggests an earlier date for woman than for man.â€

I got the information from Ross’ web site and it says that science had dated the woman as older than the man. I did not mean to imply that you thought the woman was older or that Ross thinks that way now, but it appears that he either believed it in the past or was open to believing it because it seemed to be a scientific fact. This is where I balk at the “scientific evidenceâ€. I hope you don’t mind if I tell you that I wouldn’t have been one of those who would be able to say that science could be right and then changed my mind and accepted the dating of woman to almost 60,000 years later so that now the man is older than she is. My reason would be purely scriptural because either science is right and the bible is wrong, or the bible is right and science is wrong.

It seems that we no longer have to be concerned about the vast age difference because the DNA dating has changed and now the woman is 3,000 years younger than the man. So here’s the deal in my mind. Science will have to change that date again. Do you know why? Because the first woman was made from the first man and since he didn’t even live to be 1,000 years old, it is impossible for the first man to be 3,000 years older than the first woman.

I am not sure if you believe the dating of first man at 43,000 years and first woman at 40,000 years but when science changes those dates again, I won’t have to adjust my view. I have no doubt that the woman came from the man and therefore she was around while he was alive and was at least a partial day younger than he was. I am happy that there are at least some scientists who ask why the discrepancy exists. I am sure there are lots who just accept the evidence of science and never question it.

You said: “Therefore, if we began with Adam’s Y and Eve’s mito and trace it over thousands of years we should expect to see the same level of diversity in the DNA for both men and women. We don’t! We see a more diverse collection of mito than we do with Y.â€

Interesting. I can’t say that I understand everything you have written, because I am definitely not as smart as you are, but it is interesting.

You said: “However, since mito DNA is from mothers through daughters we have three separate women (son’s wives) contributing their mito DNA to the gene pool. We are all descended from these three women.â€

I may be dense here but I don’t quite see how that has much to do with going back to Eve. After all, Noah, his wife, the three daughters-in-law, and Noah’s three sons are all descendents of Adam and Eve. The ultimate DNA trace has to go back to Adam, not Noah. My contention is that Eve is a descendent of Adam as she was taken from his DNA so although every son or daughter of Adam is traceable directly back to Adam the sinner, there is one human who is traceable back to Eve and from her back to Adam before Adam sinned. So in our genetics discussion, we must be able to trace Eve back to Adam because she is not a separate creation from the dirt but a DNA descendent of Adam. If we understand this, I am wondering what Christian geneticist could not possibly cry “foul†with scientific data that makes her either 57,000 years older than Adam or 3,000 years younger than Adam. This is the part that I do not understand. I know that the old earth belief is not a matter of separation between believers but I would like to see those who have the old earth belief stand up for scripture and shout down the scientific data that contradicts scripture. That would make me a lot more confident that the old earth view is not disregarding scripture and setting up a worldview that makes the next generation distrust the inspired words (begat) or the inspired dates (ages of the fathers when they produced their heir and when they died).

Whew! I think I am finally caught up to you with your four posts. You certainly gave me a lot to work on for a couple of days, eh? Thanks, my friend!