I found an article by an outfit called LogosRA ("We use scholarship, logic, and the scientific method to show that the historical claims of the Bible are not only credible, but are superior to evolutionary theory to explain the origin of the world we see"), written by John Sanford, among others. The article is cited by the bastions of creationism, ICR here:
http://www.icr.org/article/8215/
A PDF of the article is here:
http://media.wix.com/ugd/a704d4_0f9e...cbbbd821af.pdf
Here is the ICR summary:
ICR ignore the convenient fact that before the flood the graph was pretty much flat, though the article itself is quite open about it:
However, once the point is made, it is then swept under the carpet! From the flood onwards, they say:
To my eye it looks a good fit - but it does not support the creationist model. In the creationist model, the decay started at the Fall, not the flood. Thus, the author of the article tacks on the ad hoc rationalisation:
I wonder what those reasons are? Anyway, what they are proposing also fails to fit the data. If the mutation rate was due to a radiation event, then the rate has undergone a change. And yet their argument is founded on data that they insist indicates a consistent decay rate. You cannot have it both ways. Either the rate is consistent, which is the basis of the article, or it changed.
Anyway the good news is that the curve is flattening out, as is the nature of exponential decay curves, so presumably the human race is hardly degenerating at all now. By the way, does Sanford have an explanation for why the genetic deterioration has pretty much come to a halt?
http://www.icr.org/article/8215/
A PDF of the article is here:
http://media.wix.com/ugd/a704d4_0f9e...cbbbd821af.pdf
Here is the ICR summary:
Plant geneticist Dr. John Sanford and his colleagues plotted the ages of the biblical patriarchs listed in Genesis. The result shows a systematic drop-off in lifespans after 950-year-old Noah, “in a way that could never happen by chance,” according to an online post showing their results.
The researchers’ post points out how the biological decay curve found in these biblical texts matches biological decay curves known from the science of mutation accumulation.1,2 As mutations add up after every generation, they constantly erode genetic information.
The researchers’ post points out how the biological decay curve found in these biblical texts matches biological decay curves known from the science of mutation accumulation.1,2 As mutations add up after every generation, they constantly erode genetic information.
If we plot the first 10 generations from Adam to Noah, we see that most of the Patriarchs lived to be over 900 years old. Longevity was stable in that period, and the trend-line is nearly flat
If we plot the lifespan of Noah and his descendants, we see an abrupt change during Noah’s life, followed by an amazingly systematic decline, continuously going to shorter and shorter lifespans (Figure 3). This decline in lifespan began at the time of the Biblical Flood.
...
The shape of the downward slope should be immediately recognized by any biologist. It is a biological decay curve. Noah’s descendants were undergoing some type of rapid degenerative process. As stated in the introduction, there is now very strong evidence that man is degenerating genetically (and has been for thousands of years), due to continuously accumulating mutations.
...
The shape of the downward slope should be immediately recognized by any biologist. It is a biological decay curve. Noah’s descendants were undergoing some type of rapid degenerative process. As stated in the introduction, there is now very strong evidence that man is degenerating genetically (and has been for thousands of years), due to continuously accumulating mutations.
However, the extremely precipitous decline in lifespans recorded in the Bible, just after the Flood (figure 3), is actually significantly steeper than our numerical simulations would have predicted. We have reasons to believe that the Flood was a high-radiation event, and that in the centuries immediately after the Flood, mutation rates may have been substantially higher than present.
Anyway the good news is that the curve is flattening out, as is the nature of exponential decay curves, so presumably the human race is hardly degenerating at all now. By the way, does Sanford have an explanation for why the genetic deterioration has pretty much come to a halt?
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