It looks to me like from the time of Darwin, sometimes people have tried to use evolution theories to discredit Christianity or some Christian beliefs. More recently some people who felt targeted by that started thinking that it was happening in public schools, and they have responded by trying to have evolution theory removed from the curriculum and/or have creation theory added, and by trying to discredit evolution theory. The debates here may or may not have some roots in that.
As I understand it, the creationism that’s being debated here includes thinking that one of the creation stories in the Bible is an actual physical description of how the universe, including the earth and all living creatures, were first created less than 10,000 years ago. I don’t claim to know if that’s true or not, but however that may be, I disagree with trying to have evolution theory removed from the curriculum or having creation theory added to it, and I disagree with trying to discredit evolution theory. Even if evolution theory is being used in public education to try to discredit some religious beliefs, I disagree with those ways of responding to that.
The arguments that I’ve seen here for thinking that all life on earth has a common ancestor look very weak to me, and it looks to me like many researchers, possibly most of them, have abandoned that idea in practice.
Evolution is simply significant enough gene pool changes within a species changing over the course of many generations resulting in organisms having genetic traits different enough from their distant ancestors; so that there'd be no possible sexual reproduction occurring between somebody who were to have distant ancestral genetic traits with anybody living in the current population.
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.
The first individual of the genus Homo-species formed from a couple of Australopithecus hetero zygotes, each of whom had the same type of chromosome rearrangements formed by fusion of the whole long arms of two acrocentric chromosomes, mated together and reproduced viable and fertile offspring with 46 chromosomes.
This first generation of Homo habilis then incestuously bred with each other and reproduced the next subsequent generation of Homo habilis.
References:
- J. Tjio and A. Levan. 1956. The chromosome number of Man. Hereditas, 42( 1-2): 1-6.
- W. Ijdo et al.1991. Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusión. PNAS, 88: 9051-9056.
- Meyer et al. 2012 A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science, 338:222-226.; K. H. Miga. 2016. Chromosome-specific Centromere sequences provide an estímate of the Ancestral Chromosome 2 Fusion event in Hominin Genome.Journ. of Heredity. 1-8. Doi:10.1093/jhered/esw039.
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.
