Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1)

@agauger

I thank you for your clarifying details. Timelines are certainly important in the development of your views.

But I do struggle with just one point: You say you accept Old Earth. I must assume that your acceptance of an Old Earth is part of what came after you submitted your chapters in the TE book. Otherwise, I would have expected that your chapters would reflect Old Earth views, and that your submissions would not have been included in the TE book.

Since you have an “insiders’” view… can you list a few names of any other experts in the I.D. field (other than you or Dr. Behe):

Who are Definitively and Simultaneously:
1) Old Earthers, where humanity, not just the Earth, was created well before 10,000 years ago;
and
2) that God formed present-day Humanity by influencing the step-by-step genetic progression of
a population (or populations) of pre-humans - - who would thus be the legitimate biological ancestors
of modern humans.

Let’s start things on an easy gradient, Dr. Gauger. Can you confirm that your views currently satisfy both of the points above? If not, which point seems to be the problem?

I worded the two-way criteria above to accomplish a few things at once:
A) To accommodate some of @Swamidass’s scenarios, without doing specific harm to evolutionary scenarios.
B) To defeat dodgy equivocations by some who say they are Old Earthers but still insist that humanity came
from a single pair 6000 years ago, with evolution not even being a consideration.
C) To satisfy many BioLogos supporters who see no controversy in the idea that God guided evolution.

@Chris_Falter

Vol 2016 This lists both papers, with links.
Ola Hössjer, Ann Gauger, and Colin Reeves are the authors.

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@gbrooks
I think you have several things run together which need to be separate. It is possible to hold that the earth is old, and not have a position on the age of humanity. There is a great deal of evidence that the earth is old, which I accept, and disputed evidence about when humans first appeared and whether common descent is true. Those last two are what I am working on.

My chapters do not discuss old earth views. Neither do they propose a young earth. Casey Luskin’s discussion of fossils clearly does. And not discussing something does not indicate disagreement with it.

Concerning the opinions of other ID supporters, I can’t answer because I don’t know. I haven’t taken a poll. Some may be on the fence, some may be on either side of the fence. And I said, you need to separate your categories.

I am glad that many Biologos supporters believe that God guided evolution. I guess the question that might distinguish my position from theirs is whether we can detect that guidance.

  1. I don’t know when humanity was created. I am still waiting on the results of our model. I favor an older origin but don’t consider it settled yet.
  2. I can’t affirm 2. I don’t affirm common descent, at least where humans are concerned. I am open to evidence.

No. I was old earth from the beginning. I don’t know why you think otherwise.

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@AMWolfe

Thanks for your response. Admittedly I am basing my evaluation on a book by Tom Wolfe :slightly_smiling_face:
and I am not a linguist. However, I discount Everett’s story for this reason:
He challenged Chomsky on one particular grammatical feature that Chomsky said was universal, by saying that the tribe he worked with did not have this feature in their language. Fair enough, but tribe members who moved to locations where they had to learn other languages picked up that grammatical feature without trouble. So it’s not that they lacked the structure in their brain, just that it wasn’t being used until necessary.

Everett does have his supporters. The article concerning Homo erectus and boat building had a favorable quote from Kenneth Laland I believe. He is a member of the group that wants to see an extended synthesis for evolution.

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@gbrooks9

One more thing. After your questions about why I didn’t declare myself on the age of the earth in the TE book, I remembered something. The editors decided well before I joined the team to not bring up the age of the earth. This was discussed in Wayne Grudem’s intro.

A. What This Book Is Not About
This book is not about the age of the earth. We are aware that many sincere Christians hold a “young earth” position (the earth is perhaps 10,000 years old), and many others hold an “old earth” position (the earth is 4.5 billion years old). This book does not take a position on that issue, nor do we discuss it at any point in the book.

So nobody discussed this subject, and that reveals nothing about anybody’s position. Certain chapters discussed material that required the use of dates–those chapters used old earth dates.

I understand that you see the YEC position as inimical, and you would like for someone somehow to persuade them of the truth. At least that’s how I read what you have written. You think I have not declared my position to avoid offending them. No, I will declare what I see as happening, but not declare what I see as not firmly settled as if it were settled. And BTW, my taking up an old Adam position will not change anybody’s mind.

Another thing, it’s one thing to propose an idea, and another thing to hang one’s hat on it. I have stated my reasons for why I think an old Adam would fit the data best, but that choice depends on which data are emphasized and which are left out. Other choices can be made.

A good deal of science is living in tension with conflicting data, and trying to find a way to explain both sides. I find the science/faith dispute about origins is similar. I know a little, and what I do know I hold very gently, because I can be wrong. There is a great deal more that I do not know, and even more that I don’t know I don’t know :slight_smile:

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A post was split to a new topic: Question for Ann Gauger

That is correct: I do not affirm a historical Adam. That’s not really based on scientific considerations – the way I view the Bible operating as scripture doesn’t give me any reason to think Adam would have been a historical figure.

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@glipsnort,

You don’t find some of the scenarios being explored by @Swamidass appealing?

The one I like is that God uses special creation to create the Adam and Eve pair, and they shape the course of the entire human race by having their descendants blend into the ancient human lineage(s) that have evolved on Earth . . . not realizing they were prepared for the arrival of Adam and Eve.

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No. I might find it appealing if I thought the authors of Genesis were intending to talk about a historical figure, and if I thought they had access to information about such a figure. But since I don’t believe either of those things, estimating the time of genealogical Adam is of no more interest to me than, say, estimating the date of the first human with blonde hair, or the first human who was lactose tolerant.

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Makes a lot of sense to me why @glipsnort does not care.

Our views on a genealogical Adam will be tightly defined by how we read Scripture. I’m fine with that.

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Yes look at the definition.

Ad hominem (Latin for “to the man” or “to the person”[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby AN ARGUMENT IS REBUTTED by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, RATHER THAN ATTACKING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE ARGUMENT ITSELF. Ad hominem - Wikipedia

I did not make any attacks on Ann’s character, motive, or other attribute, and in particular (and most relevant), I did not use any such comments to try and rebut her argument. I did not say “Ann is motivated by her desire for a historical Adam, so her bottleneck argument is wrong”, or anything like that. My comments were made specifically about your representation of Ann, not about Ann’s argument.

But I did not dismiss her argument based on her motives. I did not dismiss her argument at all. As I have said, I was addressing your representation of Ann, not Ann’s argument.

Yes all of this can be true. But my confidence in the integrity of her approach to scientific data is not improved when she makes comments like this.

  1. “there is not enough evolutionary time for all these coordinated changes to have happened by the mutation/selection process”
  2. “Thus the evidences for common ancestry put forward by various scientists are not as solid as they might seem”
  3. “The more we learn about our human genome, the more it seems to be brilliantly and uniquely designed.”
  4. “I would say that unless somebody figures out how to go back in time, we will never be able to establish for certain that we arose from an evolutionary process”
  5. “I actually believe that we will someday falsify Darwinism, which will be great because then the question arises, “If it didn’t happen by a gradual process, how did it happen?””
  6. “It used to be said that only two to three percent of our genome coded for protein, and the rest was junk, speaking loosely. Well, the ENCODE project is revealing that this is a complete falsehood”
  7. (interview with Ann Gauger) "Regarding a couple of Swawidass’s points, Sarah Chaffee asks at one point, “Are those serious arguments?” “No, they’re not.” “Scary arguments?” You can hear Dr. Gauger suppress a laugh. “No.”

If she is “honestly wrong” in her statements about well known and settled science, then she is unreliable at best, and should be identified as such. If I were to make these statements, especially here on Biologos, I would be called out for scientific ignorance. Given her professional position, and given the influence she has, holding her to at least the same standard of accuracy, is entirely reasonable. Given your aim is to “serve the Church with an honest account of the science, regardless of our personal positions”, surely it is reasonable to expect her to do the same.

You wouldn’t accept that kind of dismissive comment if it were aimed at the concerns of someone who is ID or YEC. The fact is I am not the only person who has expressed concern with your approach. Look at this comment.

It’s clear that you’re coming across as rather one sided (to put it mildly), to more than one person. For example, you called out Dennis, saying he “presented a selective account that fit with his personal theological views”. But you haven’t done the same with Ann.

@Jonathan_Burke
@Swamidass

Please do not have any further public discussion about what is or is not ad hominem. If you really must further adjudicate this particular instance, do it via PM. Thank you. :slight_smile:

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But here’s the rub, @glipsnort, because you don’t care, and you reject the whole idea of an historical Adam being inserted into the Evolutionary scenario (as per @Swamidass constructions)… you are not likely to populate the “bridge” between some YEC and some BioLogos scenarios.

I had been wondering if Prof @agauger might serve as a bridge… but she tells me that she pretty much rejects the idea of primates as a common ancestor for the base population of humans.

So she’s out of the equation too.

She said she is not sure about common descent yet.

Not so. @glipsnort is important because he has been consistently honest about the data, and not overstated it.

Hey, @Swamidass, we are all important.

My comments were specifically addressing the service of “bridging”… not “anchoring”.
I don’t think @glipsnort will be bothered by this …

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Don’t miss this piece by @agauger.

Overall, I think she did a good job.

Then two new scientists entered the debate with Venema and Buggs. Remarkably, neither is an ID advocate, both affirm evolutionary theory, and both came to similar conclusions by different routes. A population geneticist named Dr. Steve Schaffner of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, ran a simulation to determine whether a bottleneck of two individuals was possible. He found that, at dates older than 500,000 years ago, a bottleneck could not be ruled out. His analysis of allele frequencies could not distinguish between allele frequencies obtained after a bottleneck of two and those from current genetic data. Dr. Joshua Swamidass, assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University in St. Louis, estimated the time to the most recent four alleles in the genome. An allele is a version of a gene. We all carry two copies of each gene (setting sex chromosomes aside), so a bottleneck of two individuals would have a maximum of four alleles per gene. His analysis likewise showed that the most recent time at which a bottleneck of two individuals, or four alleles, could have occurred was about 500,000 years ago. Both researchers used experimentally validated mutation rates in their models, and the precise details are worth looking at closely.

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Hi Steve @glipsnort please could I just doublecheck some details with you? The simulations you ran earlier in this discussion were for:

  1. A constant effective population size of 16,384 and a mutation rate (1.6e-8/bp/generation)
  2. A constant effective population size of 16,384 then a bottleneck of two 100,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size (mutation rate 1.6e-8/bp/generation)
  3. A constant effective population size of 16,384 then a bottleneck of two 250,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size. (mutation rate 1.6e-8/bp/generation)
  4. A constant effective population size of 16,384 then a bottleneck of two 500,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size. (mutation rate 1.6e-8/bp/generation)
  5. A constant effective population size of 16,384 then a bottleneck of two 1,000,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size. (mutation rate 1.6e-8/bp/generation)
  6. A constant effective population size of 16,384 then a bottleneck of two 250,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size. (mutation rate 2.0 x 10^-8)
  7. A rapidly expanding effective population size prior to the bottleneck rising to 1.4 million then a bottleneck of two 250,000 years ago, with population doubling each generation for 14 generations (350 years) until it reaches a population size of 16,384 after which the population has constant size (mutation rate 1.6e-8/bp/generation)
    I think that is what you did, but just wanted to double check with you.
    many thanks
    Richard
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Except when you throw in sentences like:

I guarantee a certain percentage of the readership hears "If you don’t have atheist evolutionist assumptions about millions and billions of years, it’s totally plausible that Adam and Eve could have existed 6,000 years ago. Maybe not totally Ann Gauger’s fault, but still unfortunate.

Also, how many of the readers understand that the “we” in this sentence is not homo sapiens?

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Exactly. That has been the entire aim all along.

Yep. And note “supposedly split from chimps”, intended to communicate clear denial of common descent.

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Also:

“The claim that our population was never smaller than thousands is wrong.”

So, “our population” is hominins who lived more than 500,000 years ago? I wonder how many people would agree that counts as “our population”? Plus, is it wrong, or just unprovable? It is true to say there is no evidence that our population was smaller than thousands, correct? Even using that very generous and not intuitive definition of “our population”?

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