The real question is why would anything good happen at all to anyone, when we are rebellious sinners inhabiting a fallen world? Yet God, in order to glorify himself through the display of his mercy, chose to save some of us, and the suffering which we experience now does not at all compare with our future glorification.
As I've noted elsewhere in some other discussions about Christianity, Jesus's family tree has a time span of 77 generations listed between his generation and Adam whom the Bible claims was the "first man". Reference: (
Luke 3:23-38) and Eve whom the Bible claims as the mother of all the living. (
Genesis 3:20)
However, the Australian aborigines have evidently been in Australia for over a thousand consecutive generations. Reference:
Aboriginal Australians - Wikipedia
There have been hundreds of generations of Native Americans between the time their common ancestry migrated from Asia until the time of Christ.
Reference:
Native Americans in the United States - Wikipedia
Of course, the Bible is wrong; in fact, there were people prior to the 76th generation before Christ that allegedly was spawned by Adam and Eve.
Adam as being the first man and perpetrator of original sin is an important premise of Christianity. If Adam wasn't the first man, then there isn't actually any "origin sin". Jesus supposedly died on the Cross to save humankind from "original sin". If there isn't any "original sin" from which to be saved, then Jesus Christ's death on the Cross is pretty pointless and meaningless. Evidently, there were many generations of people prior to the 76th generation before Christ whom the Bible claims was spawned by Adam. So then, Adam, Eve and original sin are mythological. There is neither any "first man" nor "original sin" throughout human evolution. Thus, Jesus Christ having died on the cross to save mankind from "original sin" is not reality but is rather mythological.
The fossil record isn't the only evidence in support of evolution. There is other collaborating evidence, such as overwhelming genetic evidence of common ancestry between humans and other great ape species.
Specific examples from comparative physiology and biochemistry:
Chromosome 2 in humans
Main article: Chromosome 2 (human)
Further information: Chimpanzee Genome Project § Genes of the Chromosome 2 fusion site
Figure 1b: Fusion of ancestral chromosomes left distinctive remnants of telomeres, and a vestigial centromere
Evidence for the evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestor with chimpanzees is found in the number of chromosomes in humans as compared to all other members of Hominidae. All hominidae have 24 pairs of chromosomes, except humans, who have only 23 pairs. Human chromosome 2 is a result of an end-to-end fusion of two ancestral chromosomes.
The evidence for this includes:
The correspondence of chromosome 2 to two ape chromosomes. The closest human relative, the common chimpanzee, has near-identical DNA sequences to human chromosome 2, but they are found in two separate chromosomes. The same is true of the more distant gorilla and orangutan.
The presence of a vestigial centromere. Normally a chromosome has just one centromere, but in chromosome 2 there are remnants of a second centromere.
The presence of vestigial telomeres. These are normally found only at the ends of a chromosome, but in chromosome 2 there are additional telomere sequences in the middle.
Chromosome 2 thus presents strong evidence in favour of the common descent of humans and other apes. According to J. W. Ijdo, "We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2
Fusion of ancestral chromosomes left distinctive remnants of telomeres, and a vestigial centromere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_o...on_descent
Endogenous retroviruses (or ERVs) are remnant sequences in the genome left from ancient viral infections in an organism. The retroviruses (or virogenes) are always passed on to the next generation of that organism that received the infection. This leaves the virogene left in the genome. Because this event is rare and random, finding identical chromosomal positions of a virogene in two different species suggests common ancestry. Cats (Felidae) present a notable instance of virogene sequences demonstrating common descent. The standard phylogenetic tree for Felidae have smaller cats (Felis chaus, Felis silvestris, Felis nigripes, and Felis catus) diverging from larger cats such as the subfamily Pantherinae and other carnivores. The fact that small cats have an ERV where the larger cats do not suggests that the gene was inserted into the ancestor of the small cats after the larger cats had diverged. Another example of this is with humans and chimps. Humans contain numerous ERVs that comprise a considerable percentage of the genome. Sources vary, but 1% to 8% has been proposed. Humans and chimps share seven different occurrences of virogenes, while all primates share similar retroviruses congruent with phylogeny.
There's plenty of evidence humans share common ancestry with other great apes.
Evidence of common descent - Wikipedia
ERVs provide the closest thing to a mathematical proof for evolution.. ERVs are the relics of ancient viral infections preserved in our DNA. The odd thing is many ERVs are located in exactly the same position on our genome and the chimpanzee genome! There are two explanations for the perfectly matched ERV locations. Either it is an unbelievable coincidence that viruses just by chance were inserted in exactly the same location in our genomes, or humans and chimps share a common ancestor. The chances that a virus was inserted at the exact same location is 1 in 3,000,000,000. Humans and chimps share 7 instances of viruses inserted at perfectly matched location. It was our common ancestor that was infected, and we both inherited the ERVs.
Johnson, Welkin E.; Coffin, John M. (1999-08-31).
"Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences".
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 96(18): 10254–10260.
Bibcode:
1999PNAS...9610254J.
doi:
10.1073/pnas.96.18.10254.
ISSN 0027-8424.
PMC 17875.
PMID 10468595
Human genetic diversity is too great for there to have ever been a human population size that consisted of less than ca.10,000 individuals. Pairwise Sequentially Markovian Coalescent (PSMC) analysis confirms a population bottleneck in humans that consisted of no fewer than ca, 10,000 individuals. Source: ( Li, Heng, and Durbin, Richard. ) "Inference of Human Population History from Individual Whole-Genome Sequences".
Nature International Weekly Journal of Science. 28 July 2001.
PSMC estimate on simulated data. : Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
If there were the most severe population bottle-necking such as one breeding pair that is portrayed in the case of the Biblical Adam and Eve, then there would be a maximum of 4 alleles passed on by Adam and Eve to their children. Furthermore, the subsequent inbreeding would cause some loss of alleles due to genetic drifting. There would not have been genetic diversity in the small group of Adam, Eve and their children who would've had to commit incest among each other for the procreation of their inbred children. A lack of genetic diversity would have persisted for thousands of generations until genetic mutations could cause the genetic diversity of today's population. Based on the number of different alleles there are for the number of genes within the current population and the known rate of mutations per nucleotide sites in humans, geneticists can calculate the minimum number of people needed to create the current amount of genetic diversity. Numerous genetic studies suggest that there were several thousands of people more than two people during the most severe population bottleneck which ever occurred in human history.
DNA segments ( Alu repeats ) insert themselves at various chromosomal locations. There are various forms of Alu sequences and several thousand families of Alu. One well-studied family of Alu is called Ya5, which has been inserted into human chromosomes at 57 mapped locations. If we were to have descended from a single pair of ancestors such as Adam and Eve, then we all would have each of the 57 elements inserted at the same location points of our chromosomes. " However, the human population consists of groups of people who share some insertion points but not others. The multiple shared categories make it clear that although a human population bottleneck occurred, it was definitely never as small as two. In fact, this line of evidence also indicates that there were at least several thousand people when the population was at its smallest". Source: ( Venema, Dennis and Falk, Darrel ) " Does Genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple?". 5 April 2010.
Does Genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple? | The BioLogos Forum
Coalescence theory analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms and linkage disequilibrium indicates the mean effective population size for hominid lineage is 100,000 individuals over the course of the last 30 million years. The effective population size estimated from linkage disequilibrium is a minimum of 10,000 followed by an expansion in the last 20,000 years." Source: ( Tenesa, Albert, Navarro, Paul, Hayes, Ben J., Duffy, David L., Clarke,Geraldine, Goodard, Mike E. and Visscher, Peter M.) " Recent Human Effective Population Size Estimated from Linkage Disequilibrium".
Genome Research. 17 April 2007
Recent human effective population size estimated from linkage disequilibrium
Indeed, there is ample genetic evidence that biblical Adam and Eve never actually existed.
