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John Sanford's Biblical evidence for genetic meltdown

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  • John Sanford's Biblical evidence for genetic meltdown

    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:
    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.
    ICR ignore the convenient fact that before the flood the graph was pretty much flat, though the article itself is quite open about it:
    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
    However, once the point is made, it is then swept under the carpet! From the flood onwards, they say:
    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.
    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:
    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.
    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?
    My Blog: http://oncreationism.blogspot.co.uk/

  • #2
    You see, the Vapor Canopy blocked the UVB, UVC, and Cosmic Rays which have continually degraded the genome since the Fludde.

    So simple a never-existing caveman can understand it!

    K54

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    • #3
      Not posting this to get into the discussion, but it surprises me that there was no mention of this.

      Genesis 6:1 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

      This seems to be Biblical support for what they are after, even if not scientific support.

      Comment


      • #4
        We already have a thread discussing this Sanford latest nonsense here.

        John Sanford doubles down on his Genetic Entropy idiocy

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
          Not posting this to get into the discussion, but it surprises me that there was no mention of this.

          Genesis 6:1 When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

          This seems to be Biblical support for what they are after, even if not scientific support.
          Do have any idea who or what the "sons of God" were?

          Do you claim this (inter-species) breeding resulted in genome decay?

          Do you believe God sanctioned or caused or whatever the 120-year lifespan? What about when it became "three score and ten" later on?

          And as stated before, I thought sin and death and eating bread by the sweat of one's brow, and pain in childbirth were a result of the Fall and the Man and Woman being booted out of the Garden?

          I don't see ANY science here at all.

          Also why have lifespans been increasing since the Industrial Revolution in developed nations if there is continually genome decay?

          K54

          P.S. In any case I agree with you. The issue is (much!) more scriptural than scientific.
          Last edited by klaus54; 07-17-2014, 09:48 AM. Reason: p.s.

          Comment


          • #6
            Just a side note or question. Is genetic make up of biological life getting more disordered or more ordered?
            Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by seer View Post
              Just a side note or question. Is genetic make up of biological life getting more disordered or more ordered?
              What do you mean by "ordered"?

              The collective genome has gotten much more diverse since the emergence of H. sapiens from Africa 30,000 years ago.

              E.g., would you consider a typical Native American tribe's genome to be more or less ordered than a typical Han Chinese?

              How about a German and a Neanderthal?

              An Indian and a Latvian?

              K54

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by seer View Post
                Just a side note or question. Is genetic make up of biological life getting more disordered or more ordered?
                What do you mean by "more ordered or disordered'?

                For some very successful species like humans the amount of genetic diversity across the whole population has increased greatly in the last 5000 years. For species on the verge of extinction like the cheetah the genetic diversity of the population is very low, leading to the population bottleneck effect.

                Genomes in individuals are different that those of their parents but the concept of "more ordered or less ordered" is pretty meaningless.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by seer View Post
                  Just a side note or question. Is genetic make up of biological life getting more disordered or more ordered?
                  No.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
                    Do have any idea who or what the "sons of God" were?
                    One explanation is that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, sons of God in the sense of following god's law (analogous to the Jews); the sons of man were the descendants of Cain, who did not follow god's laws (cf the gentiles).
                    My Blog: http://oncreationism.blogspot.co.uk/

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by The Pixie View Post
                      One explanation is that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, sons of God in the sense of following god's law (analogous to the Jews); the sons of man were the descendants of Cain, who did not follow god's laws (cf the gentiles).
                      One explanation I heard were that the "sons of God" were angelic (demonic) beings that somehow took human form and were able to produce sperm to impregnate human women.

                      Women. Always attracted to the "bad boys". Probably the demons rode Harleys with straight pipes and possessed a plethora or tattoos and piercings.

                      Science - ain't it marvelous?

                      K54

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by The Pixie View Post
                        One explanation is that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, sons of God in the sense of following god's law (analogous to the Jews); the sons of man were the descendants of Cain, who did not follow god's laws (cf the gentiles).
                        It's a bunch of crack. Menkind without Adam and Yeshu of Nazareth are not descended from God when conceived.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by klaus54 View Post
                          One explanation I heard were that the "sons of God" were angelic (demonic) beings that somehow took human form and were able to produce sperm to impregnate human women.

                          Women. Always attracted to the "bad boys". Probably the demons rode Harleys with straight pipes and possessed a plethora or tattoos and piercings.

                          Science - ain't it marvelous?

                          K54
                          They didn't take human form and can't, but your hypothesis a such was closer to true.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Omniskeptical View Post
                            They [demons] didn't take human form and can't
                            Uh, given that this is the Natural Science forum, I think you should provide evidence for that claim.

                            Roy
                            Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                            MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                            MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                            seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Roy View Post
                              Uh, given that this is the Natural Science forum, I think you should provide evidence for that claim.

                              Roy
                              I don't see any reason to. Enlighten us.
                              Last edited by Omniskeptical; 07-19-2014, 04:01 PM.

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