Novel features and the evolutionist word-magic flimflam: If you assert it aggressively enough that will make it true.

There's a new thread at EvC about how novel features could have evolved, started by Tangle, who is one of the best posters EvC has ever had. Yes, he's an evolutionist but he's reasonable, he approaches the different subjects carefully, really makes an effort to grasp the best creationist arguments and treats them as rational rather than idiotic, is able to express the arguments articulately, and tries to find good evidence to answer them.

That's what he hopes will come of this new thread, since the last one on the subject degenerated into side issues and what he calls "exotica," or a sort of theoretical neverneverland -- which is usually where I stop reading a thread myself.

Some 17 posts into this new thread my assessment of him is holding up as he's dealing well with the other posts so far and keeping the creationist argument he wants to defeat clearly on the table.

I do want to comment here on JAR's contribution because JAR's arguments for the theory of evolution are mostly irrational and emotional, assuming most of it without evidence and thinking he's produced evidence when all he's done is assert the theory and dumped an observed fact or two into it. That's more or less what they all do but JAR is over the top most of the time. What I quote from Taq in my previous post on genetic information a couple days ago is an example of this kind of thinking, a real salad of assumption, assertion and the occasional fact. And for an example of JAR's inability to distinguish evidence from fantasy see his thread about the mummified man Oetzi from a few years ago.

Anyway, here we have another JAR production. First he asks:

Is this another hunt for the super genome? I thought we put that absurdity to bed long ago?

Tangle does a marvelously clear job of answering this later, the answer being No, a super genome isn't needed, the creationist position is that all the material for variation is in the genome we see now. Again if it weren't for my arthritic bones I'd jump and dance for joy at such clarity.

I used to think some sort of super genome was probably called for to explain the very great genetic variability that would have been needed to support the vigor and longevity of pre-Flood life, both human and animal, but I came to realize that simple heterozygosity for most traits provides an enormous range of variability. And, if junk DNA represents all the genes lost through the bottleneck of the Flood, and killed by mutations down through the generations since then, there would have been a huge range of genetic possibilities available before the Flood, and these two factors alone amount to a "super" genome without having to posit any difference in its structure.

Then JAR gives us this information:

We have come a long way in a fairly short period of time in sequencing various genomes. There are grape and cow and human and ancient human and neanderthal and bee and chimp genome sequencing projects and one factor has become pretty much a universal characteristic and that is that the genomes can be identified.

Send a lab an unknown sample and they send back a short note saying "That's a goat." or "That's a human." or "That's a elm tree".

We have samples from ancient folk and modern folk, from here and from there.

Marvelous! Exactly what a creationist would expect to see! Exactly what exists in reality! Observed facts that confirm creationism. Of course he doesn't notice that he's confirming creationist expectations and assumes instead that he's confirming his evolutionist bias -- or perhaps he thinks that if he announces it aggressively enough it will stop supporting creationism.

But then in a mind-boggling non sequitur he says this:

Novel features evolve over time in populations by changes in the genome that then get filtered by natural selection.

But all he's offered so far is nothing that could support this amazing leap into Evo Fantasyland but in fact supports the creationist view. The fact that solid scientific laboratories can so clearly recognize different Species from a look at their DNA naturally raises the question how one could evolve from another, how novel features could possibly arise. But of course he doesn't know, all he can do is recite the Evolutionist Creed that flatly declares that they DO arise, do "evolve over time in populations by changes in the genome". Uh huh. HOW, Jar? Silence. And he also knows that they "then get filtered by natural selection." Which isn't in dispute.

Then he adds another non-sequitur in another bit of creed:

It all comes down to imperfect copies.

I'm glad Tangle seems to know how to avoid getting entangled as it were in this typical frustrating evolutionist irrationality, and I hope he can continue doing so and get this thread on the track of something useful.

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Then in Post #18 JAR says:

But today we can identify not just individual species from a DNA sample, but often specific populations within a species.

That shows that genomes do change over time.

Again, he says this as if he's saying something that supports evolution, but in fact it supports creationism just as well. It's great to hear that DNA can tell them so much about a species and its varieties, really great. It reflects exactly what a creationist sees in the phenotype, and it's great to see that the DNA reflects it so exactly. The usual variation, the expected variation built into the genome. Microevolution.

Why can't these people at least LEARN what the creationist claims are and stop arguing with their straw men? And this is only one part of the futility of the Evo-Creo debate.

Well, again, I hope Tangle is up to untangling all this.

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5/24 Too bad, apparently Tangle isn't. The thread has degenerated into obscurantist technospeak, more credal announcements peppered with the usual accusations of creationists.

And of course nobody has criticized JAR for posting information as if it was evidence for evolution when it actually confirms creationist expectations just as well, proving again the futility of debate there.

Too bad, started well.

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May 30 follow=up. Tangle again seems to have extricated the question from the oblivion that was threatening:

There have been a couple of further studies by the same people on these mice that add to the evidence. This one shows that natural selection is the mechanism that matches dark mice with dark rocks and light mice with light rocks. (Sadly, I can see only the abstract)

Previous work has demonstrated that two Mc1r alleles, D and d, differ by four amino acids, and are responsible for the color polymorphism: DD and Dd genotypes are melanic whereas dd genotypes are light colored. To determine the frequency of the two Mc1r allelic classes across the dark-colored lava and neighboring light-colored granite, we sequenced the Mc1r gene in 175 individuals from a 35-km transect in the Pinacate lava region. We also sequenced two neutral mtDNA genes, COIII and ND3, in the same individuals. We found a strong correlation between Mc1r allele frequency and habitat color and no correlation between mtDNA markers and habitat color. Using estimates of migration from mtDNA haplotypes between dark- and light-colored sampling sites and Mc1r allele frequencies at each site, we estimated selection coefficients against mismatched Mc1r alleles, assuming a simple model of migration-selection balance. Habitat-dependent selection appears strong but asymmetric: selection is stronger against light mice on dark rock than against melanic mice on light rock. Together these results suggest that natural selection acts to match pocket mouse coat color to substrate color, despite high levels of gene flow between light and melanic populations.

Jun;58(6):1329-41.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15266981 The writers of these papers are very confident that they have identified the genes responsible for coloration in the mice that they have studied (but not other mice in other locations) and say that the difference is 4 amino acids.

How confident can we be that the allele changes are as a result of a mutation of an 'original' gene?

Good question I say. But I'd also say they don't have an answer because that question isn't one they are investigating. Mutation is usually assumed rather than made the subject of scientific inquiry.

Genetic Evidence of the Bottleneck at Noah's Flood Part 1

Well, hi de ho, somebody finally decided to try to have a discussion about the claim that the bottleneck of Noah's Flood should have left genetic evidence that it didn't leave. I've many times wondered exactly what evidence they think they would find, so let's hope somebody finally defines it.

In several threads, Jar has brought up the genetic bottleneck argument against the biblical flood and it appears to me to be a slam dunk of an argument. So I thought it was worth expanding on it and teasing out the details.

Sure, go for it.

Perhaps we should start with when creationists think the flood happened (my bold).

When was Noah’s Flood? 1,981 years to AD 0 plus 967 years to the founding of Solomon’s Temple plus 480 years to the end of the Exodus plus 430 years to the promise to Abraham plus 75 years to Abraham’s birth plus 350 years to Shem’s 100th birthday plus 2 years to the Flood. The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/...v4/n1/date-of-noahs-flood

So this is about 4,300 years ago. (Maybe other dates around that time will be claimed but a bottleneck should still be apparent.)

I sometimes round it to 4500 years ago but 4300 is more accurate though a couple hundred years isn't going to change the evidence anyway.

Because all existing species have descended from so few individual so recently, their genomes should be very, very similar to each other - simply because all members of the same species would be close cousins.

Species that we know have undergone a bottleneck, such as the elephant seal and the North American bison - which were hunted to near extinction - and the cheetah, which appears to have also gone through a bottleneck 10,000 years ago, show this genetic fingerprint. In the cheetah's case their genetic variance is so small that their immune systems have so much in common that skin grafts aren't rejected between individuals.

So is this the sort of evidence you'd be looking for? Many fixed loci such as the cheetah's? Is this the "genetic fingerprint" you have in mind?

Jar's argument goes that if all animals and plants on earth (with the possible exception of some fish which may have been able to survive salinity changes) were reduced to either pairs, or sometimes a few more of each species (I don't see how 'kinds' could make a difference) we would see the bottleneck fingerprint in pretty much every plant and animal alive today.

The bottleneck should only be applied to creatures on the ark. Plants were not systematically saved on the ark but had to fend for themselves, same with sea creatures and apparently also insects and microorganisms.

But we don't. And because we don't it's not possible that virtually every species on earth was reduced to two or three individuals only a few thousand years ago.

And this should just about do it for the evolutionist side of the argument. I wonder if any creationists there will be up to answering it.

This is rather a unique situation; the proof does not rely on having witnesses around thousand of years ago, partial archaeological records, 'inferences' or any of the usual escape clauses of indirect evidence, it's repeatable, direct, clear, present and obvious.

I agree, it's a nice set-up for your purposes.

So what's wrong with it?
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/...o101/IIID3Bottlenecks.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

"What's wrong with it" coming up. Let's see how the thread goes for a bit and then I'll bring on my answers here. I'll post this and then add to it.

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JAR has now posted his response in Message 3:

IIRC I first presented that idea back in 2005 or 2006 and the beauty of it is that it begins by assuming only what the Bible stories say is true and asks, "If true, what must we see?"

If someone claims that they shot and hit the target, then we must see a hole in the target. If we look at the target and there is no hole, then the claim that the target was hit is falsified.

The test is also independent of when the flood happened; it does not matter if it was yesterday, 4300 years ago or 200,000 years ago.

Regardless of when the flood happened the genetic bottleneck would have been at the same time for every surviving species. The population would have been reduced to at best 14 critters of a kind and at worst 4 critters of a kind.

Actually it was seven and two of the animals and six human beings -- the three sons of Noah and their wives. Noah and his wife had no more children after the Flood so their genes only count in their sons.

But let's not let this go on too far before giving at least a sketchy answer to it: As JAR goes on to anticipate, the answer is in the "super genome" -- but see my previous post in which I've come around to modifying this notion to mean a more fully functional genome in which what is now junk DNA was then alive and contributing many more genes and alleles to the mix.

I also did a post on this some time back as a matter of fact, answering this same challenge from JAR. There ARE markers of the bottleneck in the genomes of all affected, in reduced genetic diversity which is shown in a reduced percentage of heterozygosity for each species.

JAR is anticipating a much more drastic genetic reduction on the order of the cheetah's and the elephant seal's to near-total HOMOzygosity, but those situations occurred very recently and occurred in gene pools that were already much genetically reduced from the time of the Flood after many generations of population splits. In recent times a severe bottleneck is much more likely to reduce many genes to fixed loci, meaning one allele shared by all the individuals of the bottlenecked population, than would have been the case back at the ark. At that time, assuming the much greater heterozygosity of the far more fully alive genome with very little dead or junk DNA, each individual on the ark would have been heterozygous for enough genes to produce all the variations we see today without the specific markers for reduced genetic variability that JAR is expecting based on TODAY's effects.

As I report in that post I linked above, today's human population has about 6.7% heterozygosity, about which I report one researcher said:

a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

THEREFORE, at least that much heterozygosity was represented in the passengers on the ark, and since that percentage is standard today there would be no reason to expect to see the usual drastic markers for a bottleneck of the sort that produced the cheetah.

That is, this percentage of heterozygosity we have today IS the marker of the Flood bottleneck. Because of population splits since the Flood that would have reduced it even further, it was no doubt much higher then than it is now, but BEFORE the Flood it would of course have been much much higher. I don't know whether to suppose that ALL genes could have been heterozygous back at the Creation or not, and that would include all the genes that are now in the junk DNA graveyard, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. For that 100% to have been reduced to 6.7% of the 5% of living DNA still in our genome is a perfectly reasonable expectation of the degree of loss of genetic diversity in the Flood bottleneck.

And THAT's your marker OF the bottleneck. And as I say in that post and imply above as well, so is the great percentage of junk DNA in the genome as well.

There are your markers. But you know what, I know that thread is going to go reeling on without acknowledging this idea. I'm easy to ignore out here in cyber space.

So there really isn't more to say on this subject. However, I'll continue to keep tabs on the thread, including the rest of JAR's post:

But wait, there is more...

one possible way around it has been to invoke some super genome, that the pre-flood genome was somehow different and so allowed for greater variation.

Well, there are two major problems there.

First, even if there was some super genome if the Biblical flood stories were true there would still only be at best 14 copies of it to work with and that is still a bottleneck.

True, but since the mere 6.7% heterozygosity still available in our genome today can account for enormous variety, and AT LEAST that much was represented by the few individuals of each species on the ark, a bottleneck then would have not been reduced to anything like the genetic depletion we expect today. Therefore you are looking for something that fits only your own limited imagination rather than what would really have been the genetic result of such a bottleneck. Just as the early creationist geologists and all of today's geologists persist in looking for evidence of the Flood in all the wrong places.

Second, we have genetic evidence from humans that date to before the 4300 years ago date, from as far back as 30,000 years ago and as far back as 14,000 years ago in the Americas and there is no sign of any super-genome.

I think these two lines of reasoning are pretty solid.

Well, here a creationist simply parts company with the "sciences" that take their mere conjectures about time to be fact. Sorry. The Flood occurred about 4300 years ago and the Creation about 6000 years ago and your age reckonings are nothing but delusion.

And I'm going to skip most of JAR's usual debunkeries of the Bible which usually tend to the blasphemous, and go on to:

In both myths lots of critters get killed, in the myth found in Genesis 6 it seems to be talking about land animals and birds while the myth found in Genesis 7 goes even further and wipes out all living things.

If we play mix and match and take the best scenario from each of the myths we might be able to claim that only the birds and land animals were wiped out based on the passage from the Genesis 6 story and that we have the larger saved population found in Genesis 7.

Based on that mix and match game set we have a situation where all land animals and birds found today will be descended from a population that consisted of at most fourteen critters (seven pairs of clean animals and birds) and at worst case four critters (two pair of unclean animals).

No, take the smallest numbers as I have and only for passengers on the ark, six humans, two unclean animals and seven clean (and remember that most of the clean would have been sacrificed to God by Noah after the ark landed and not have passed on their genes). Sea creatures and plants and others no doubt also perished in great numbers off the ark but we don't have the numbers to calculate in their case.

As for the passengers on the ark, the much greater percentage of heterozygosity in the pre-Flood genome even reduced to a few individuals still accounts for all the variety we see today.

Now that is what I would call a real bottleneck.

We know we can see bottlenecks in the genetic record; a great example is the one in Cheetahs but we even see them in the human genome and most other species.

BUT...

If the flood actually happened we would see a bottleneck in EVERY species of animal living on the land and EVERY bird and EVERY one of the bottlenecks show up in the SAME historical time period.

Talk about a big RED flag.

Yup you're expecting to see the same situation as in TODAY's bottlenecked populations, the extreme homozygosity even to majority fixed loci, instead of the bottleneck markers that really DO exist, the mere 6.7% heterozygosity and the 95% or more junk DNA.

That bottleneck signature would be something every geneticists in the world would see. It would be like a neon sign, Broadway at midnight on New Years Eve. It would be something even a blind geneticist could see.

So it seems to me to be a very simple test that will support or refute the Flood.

If that genetic marker is there in EVERY species living on land or bird of the air, then there is support for the flood. It does not prove the flood happened but it would be very strong support.

If on the other hand that genetic marker is NOT there, then the Flood is refuted.

Good try but the marker IS there, in fact TWO markers are there, but you miss them because your expectations are wrong.

And for the second argument see the thread Looking for the Super-Genome. -And it ain't found.

Well, now I do have a different idea of what that original genome would have looked like by which I would expect to find a pre-Flood genome with hardly any junk DNA and a majority of heterozygous genes.

The relevant question is whether it's possible to SEE the genome of ANY creature that lived before the Flood or not, and as far as I know they're all fossilized or destroyed and their DNA is not available. JAR's favorite "Oetzi" is most certainly NOT contemporaneous with Adam and Eve but lived after the Flood despite the preposterously dogmatic claims for his age. He was found in the Alps but his DNA shows him to be related to Corsicans, who most certainly did not exist before the Flood. This is all post-Flood terrain that's being described here. The Alps also did not exist before the Flood but like all the high mountains were formed by tectonic forces set in motion along with the other geologic phenomena associated with the Flood event.

In any case the markers for the Flood bottleneck ARE apparent in today's genomes if 100% or near-100% heterozygosity and no junk DNA characterize the original "super" genome.

Evidence for the Super Genome

Another new creationist at EvC has claimed that the original genome had to have been much larger than today's, which is of course a necessary inference from the creationist claim that all we have genetically is what was given at Creation to the separate Species, no further input since then. This means that an original genetic endowment for each Species has been playing out through all the variations down the centuries, and for that to be possible the original must have been much larger than today's genome.*[see bolded paragraph below about the idea it must be bigger]. And of course the opposition is demanding evidence for this "super genome" which according to their own view of things does not exist.

Considering that THEIR "evidence" consists largely of totally subjective classifications of creatures into "clades" and "nested hierarchies" from which they then infer genetic descent without a shred of ACTUAL evidence; or homologous organs scattered all over the Linnaean classification system that they've imagined into a sequence of genetic descent and called it fact; or purely imaginary made-up tales about how this or that creature came to be, or did or didn't continue to exist; or "beneficial mutations" as the source of all genetic material that in fact exist only in a few highly compromised forms while all the rest are "neutral" or the cause of thousands of genetic diseases; or collections of fossilized dead things in separated strata that are clearly related to one another that they've imagined into evolution from less to more "advanced" over time rather than contemporaneous variation, just 'cause it fits the theory; and the layers of solidified sediments themselves to which they've laughably applied time period designations etc etc etc -- you'd think they might be a LITTLE bit cautious about demanding evidence from others.

Naa.

So what IS the evidence for the super genome? It's an inference from the fact -- provable fact, not imaginary construct -- that population splits tend toward reduced genetic diversity as they also produce new phenotypes. Reason it backwards and you come to, first, the Flood where a huge bottleneck must have brought about a huge decrease in genetic diversity, but not enough to reduce any particular line of variation to fixed loci like the cheetah or the northern seals, because the genome WAS so much bigger then than now, and then back before the Flood to the Creation where you MUST suppose a much much greater genome. Add back in all the genes that died in the Flood and down the centuries that now form the "junk DNA" and that should begin to reconstruct the original genome for you. I used to think that original genome might have been appreciably differently constructed somehow than today's, but now I think that all those reinstated genes with the maximum of alleles for each, fully heterozygous all of them, all combining basically according to Mendelian principles, is quite sufficient to have produced every creature now living and in the fossil Flood Graveyard as well.

*To be accurate, it's probably not right to think of the original genome as "bigger" exactly, simply fully functioning, all of what is now junk DNA fully operational-- a MORE ALIVE genome then. The one we have today, that all the rest of the ark-preserved creatures also have, is something like 90 to 95% dead.

What we have is a model that can explain most of the data and makes sense. We don't have direct evidence of this original fully functional genome, and maybe we can't, but it ought to be recognizable, from the fact that genetic diversity does decrease with phenotypic variation, that such an original is perfectly logical and likely.

Since I just wrote the qualification "ark-preserved" I realized there are other categories, sea creatures that probably survived in different proportions than did the land creatures on the ark, for instance, and bacteria that could have survived just about anything anyway. And the evidence that bacteria DID survive better than other creatures is the fact that they DON'T have a lot of junk DNA. This is of course explained evolution-style HERE:

...which is why bacteria tend to have very little of it.

--but it IS acknowledged that they have very little of it, which according to my version of Creationism means they still have most of their original genetic endowment which the majority of the rest of the creatures don't. Also, this alone should make comparisons between bacterial genetics and the genetics of higher animals highly suspect.

That article, by the way is about how junk DNA IS junk, and how the creationists are wrong who keep trying to find function in it in order to fit their expectation of a perfect Creation in the genome. But as I've said before, junk DNA is much better understood from a creationist point of view as a record of death since the Fall. The original perfect genome would have had no death, there would have been no junk or dead DNA, but since the Fall all life is subject to death, and it makes perfect sense that this would be reflected in the genome. As the article concludes:

The bottom line, though, is the genome is mostly dead, transcriptionally. The junk is still junk.

The Genetic Markers of the Flood Bottleneck

Here comes JAR with his usual wrongheaded assertions (no, no evidence here) against the Flood of Noah.

To mention "fossils" when talking about the Biblical Flood is of course simply silly. The Biblical Flood, if it had happened, was far too recent to have anything to do with fossils.

Too recent to have anything to do with fossils? 4500 years isn't enough time? Even though evolutionists claim that fossils are being formed every day in our own time in far more mundane circumstances than the global biblical Flood? Excuse me? The Flood buried bazillions of living things which would have been made into fossils in a lot less time than 4500 years. I've seen discussions, probably creationist of course since evolutionists are committed to not knowing such things, that show the process occurring in a matter of years in caves that drip calcium carbonate. If I find such a discussion I'll post it.

The Biblical Flood myths say that all the critters on land and in the air with the exception of those critters on the fictional ark were killed during a very short period.

If that were true, then every land and air critter living today, plant or animal, would be descended from the few critters on the ark.

Very true and they are.

That would leave a genetic bottleneck marker in EVERY single living species of plant of animal, and the marker would be only a relatively few generations back.

If the Biblical Flood happened, then that marker MUST be there.

It ain't.

Case closed.

I've heard this bit of evolutionist lore many times by now, but I have NEVER ONCE SEEN AN EXPLANATION OF EXACTLY WHAT "MARKER" WOULD POINT TO A BOTTLENECK. Perhaps I merely missed it but I've been looking for some time whenever this subject comes up and all that's offered is this assertion, perhaps some ridicule and choice epithets along with it, BUT NO CLUE AS TO WHAT THE MARKER MIGHT BE THAT WOULD DEMONSTRATE THE BOTTLENECK IN QUESTION.

Now that it's come up again perhaps I'll be motivated to make a more dogged search for such information.

But meanwhile I wanted to highlight JAR's post because of something I just learned about these things that opens up a new answer to the question. I've been rereading Morris and Parker's What Is Creation Science? over the last few days, one of the first books on creationism I read after becoming a Christian, and besides recognizing many points they make that I've made my own in this debate although I'd forgotten their source, I've also run across some points that illuminate some things I hadn't digested and am only now beginning to think about.

One of them suggests an answer to just what WOULD be the genetic indicators of the bottleneck at the Flood and they aren't the sort of "marker" that would jump out at you but something a geneticist today would simply take for granted as the normal state of the genome. Whenever I've gone that far into this part of the debate I find myself wondering about a formerly much bigger genome --polyploidy for instance, which never really fit but now I have a better understanding anyway -- from which it would be easier to imagine descent of all the life forms we see today and extravagantly more varieties before the Flood as well, which certainly must have been the case BECAUSE of such an extreme bottleneck.

No, not a bigger genome, but a different genetic situation along more ordinary lines:

Parker describes how all the varieties of humans and animals are easily accounted for by simple Mendelian genetics combining a given built-in array of genes for various traits. The example he gave was of two parents with "medium" or "average" skin color, expressed as AaBb, with the capital letters representing the darkest and the lower case the lightest, saying that EVERY shade of skin that we see on earth can be produced from those two parents, from the darkest African (AABB)to the lightest Scandinavian (aabb). When you think of every other trait as genetically expressed by the same formula, it becomes clear that an enormous variety of combinations would produce an enormous variety of types or varieties or races -- of people and animals of all kinds -- which would become characteristic of groups as they migrated and became geographically isolated from one another.

And all this incredible variety requires is normal sexual recombination AND HETEROZYGOSITY of the traits.

He also gave this statistic on page 112: "[evolutionist Francisco Ayala] says that human beings are "heterozygous" for 6.7% of their genes, on the average. That means that 6 or 7 times in a 100, the pair of genes for a given trait differ like the genes for brown or blue eyes, or for rolling or not rolling the tongue. Now this may not seem like much. But Ayala calculates a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

Well, what does a bottleneck do genetically anyway? Doesn't it produce HOMOZYGOSITY for a number of traits? Isn't that what happened to the cheetah -- it has reached the point genetically where most of its genes are fixed and no variety is possible at all. Since the cheetah is of course descended from the cats on the ark, with their already drastically reduced heterozygosity -- perhaps comparable to the 6.7% of human beings -- a later bottleneck would have reduced it even further to the current state of almost 100% fixed loci, so that each individual is almost a clone of all the others, and further variation is as good as impossible.

THERE'S YOUR "MARKER" JAR. Not what you were expecting but there it is. It wouldn't be recognizable in the genome because nobody is looking for it. The average heterozygosity seen today would be accepted as the norm for all human beings for all time. It wouldn't be suspected as a marker of anything, although the basic principle is quite well known.

So instead of the genetic complexities I was trying to imagine to account for the necessity of an enormously greater variety among humans and animals before the Flood, I now appreciate that simple ordinary everyday heterozygosity can account for it all, but presumably there would have been much MORE heterozogosity for a much greater number of genes or traits before the Flood. 100% back at Adam and Eve? 50%?

And to that I would like to add another "marker" of the bottleneck, one of my favorite topics, JUNK DNA -- which makes up something over 90% of the genome. You wouldn't suspect that as a sign of the bottleneck at the Flood, would you, JAR? But if it's what I keep thinking it must be, the record of the genetic death brought about by that bottleneck, as well as all the accumulated death from other causes of course, then its mere existence in the genome is very glaring evidence of the Flood, now to be added to the other marker, the very low incidence of heterozygosity that resulted from all that death. This genetic junkyard or graveyard is a hint at enormously more genetic possibilities at the Creation than exist today.

May I please have my Nobel Prize now?

poking around EvC came up with this

Here's a thread from EvC forums titled "written in the year 5767," begun by JAR with the example of a frozen mummified man, "Oetzi," who was determined by "science" to have lived 5300 years ago, which is impossible if the Flood occurred 4500 years ago, as the Biblical timeline suggests.

There is one well known place where we can look to see if there is ANY reality to the assertion of some super-genome and that is with Oetzi the Iceman.
What do we know about Oetzi?

First he was both contemporary with Adam and likely a Grandson.

He lived about 5300 years ago and so Adam was still alive.

His mitochondrial DNA is from the haplogroup K.

He was born and his childhood was near the present town of Feldthurns in what today is Italy, but then moved about 50 km south.

He was around 40-50 years old when he died.

He had eaten twice recently, one Chamois, the other Red Deer meat along with fruit and grain, likely bread.

His shoes were composite, soles of bear skin, uppers deerhide. They were insulated with grasses.

There was blood from four other people on him.

Pollen showed that he ate his last meal in a mid altitude conifer forest and that it was spring time.

The biggest thing is that NOTHING was very different. There were NO signs of some Super-Genome in his makeup, the makeup of the other people, the critters or food, the materials used.

So, if there was some super-genome, why are there no signs of it in the people, animals, plants, spores and pollen contemporary with Adam?

This opening post is a list of assertions of supposed fact about this man that are not fact at all, but interpretations, with the exception of the statement about his shoes. This is typical of how evolution-type "science" is done.

I spend much of my own first few posts simply identifying this fact, that he has not given facts but only interpretations, and I ask for the facts upon which the interpretations were based -- a very straightforward and you would think easily accommodated request. But he doesn't give any; instead he starts interrogating me. Typical evasive tactic, especially by that particular poster, JAR.

First he was both contemporary with Adam and likely a Grandson.

[Faith]I would say, no, this is definitely not something you could KNOW about a mummified man, this is obviously interpretation. What is actually KNOWN about him? Perhaps that he was a certain height, had eaten certain foods, was dressed in a certain kind of garb, was found with certain items, these are the sort of things that can be actually KNOWN and even in these things there is room for error.

Age you cannot know, you can only speculate based on certain physical facts. What are those facts?

This is the most frustrating thing about reports from the sciences that follow the ToE, that the sheer facts are often not given but only the interpretation of them.

He lived about 5300 years ago and so Adam was still alive.

You cannot KNOW this, but only infer it from what are probably rather scanty facts. Please give all the kinds of evidence that were used to determine how long ago he lived.

His mitochondrial DNA is from the haplogroup K.

What does this mean and what are the implications of this classification? What condition was his DNA in? Were good samples obtainable or only fragments? How certain are the results of the analysis?

He was born and his childhood was near the present town of Feldthurns in what today is Italy, but then moved about 50 km south.

This is clearly quite complex interpretation of some simple physical facts. What are the simple physical facts and how did they lead to this complex interpretation? How can anybody think about what you are saying if you don't give the foundations of your interpretation? All this does is create mystification in the reader.

He was around 40-50 years old when he died.

This is no doubt based on particular physical facts too. Please provide. It shouldn't be hard to give good evidence in this case.

He had eaten twice recently, one Chamois, the other Red Deer meat along with fruit and grain, likely bread.

Yes, I read a discussion of this. Analysis of stomach contents. Not absolutely certain nevertheless, but likely.

His shoes were composite, soles of bear skin, uppers deerhide. They were insulated with grasses.

Now THAT is an actual fact for a change. I knew you had it in you! It could be more precisely stated of course -- "On his feet were found ... " etc. But I'll let you get away with that. A real fact! I'm SO happy.

There was blood from four other people on him.

Um, does this mean that there were minuscule spots and splotches of something found on and about him that when analyzed in a laboratory appeared to be human blood of four different types?

Pollen showed that he ate his last meal in a mid altitude conifer forest and that it was spring time.

Plausible but still interpretive. How can you be sure that the pollen got into his stomach while he was eating his meal or had perhaps traveled some distance with him first?

The biggest thing is that NOTHING was very different. There were NO signs of some Super-Genome in his makeup, the makeup of the other people, the critters or food, the materials used.

But it is more likely that the dating of him was WAY off.

So, if there was some super-genome, why are there no signs of it in the people, animals, plants, spores and pollen contemporary with Adam?

Well, the idea of the super genome is simply the most likely interpretation based on what we know from the Bible, but it could of course be wrong and need rethinking. But Oetzi doesn't prove much really since it's just the usual imaginative construction from who knows what.

How would you know what "animals, plants, spores and pollen" were "contemporary with Adam" anyway? Nothing in the above even discusses the age of these items or how they were analyzed. Nothing. Perhaps you could supply some discussion of the thinking that arrived at this conclusion, and the facts that were taken into account.

ALSO, other bodies have been found in this same glacier that were dated much later. A discussion of the differences between them and Oetzi -- the actual physical facts I mean -- might be most illuminating.

Then he picks on one of the nonfactual points, about how they determined the age of the mummy and of course it's by radiocarbon dating which is known to be unreliable, and to my mind the whole thread is already over. Too bad because it would have been nice just once at EvC to have a completely rational conversation about the actual evidence. And it would have been nice to get into just what Oetzi's genome looked like since the whole point of the thread is JAR's argument that there never was a super-genome, which is one of the hypotheses creationists come up with (but that's a whole other angle on the evolution debate I haven't begun to discuss yet).

Perhaps I'll explore this topic some more here, apart from the ridiculous frustrations imposed on me by the "scientific" minds at EvC who wouldn't know what evidence is if it bit them.