The flood and Ancient Chinese Documents

Indeed? This subject has been studied extensively ... can you provide references to the scientific literature? Or are you just sure because you want it that way?

Eight closely related people... that isn't too much better.This is the first mention you've made of the flood. Are you sure this is what you meant? It sure seemed like you were talking about the origin of humanity-- like when you said, in post #16, "As for the origins of man in Mesopotamia, secular anthropologists are divided over whether humanity was started by multiple couples in different locations or one couple somewhere in Northern Africa."------------------
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"Eight closely related people... that isn't too much better.
This is the first mention you've made of the flood. Are you sure this is what you meant? It sure seemed like you were talking about the origin of humanity-- "sorry about that, what I am trying to say is that I believe that the origin of humanity was in mesopotamia or Northen Africa. I then strayed from the subject to the flood (local btw, and I did mention the flood earlier in this thread) because I believe that the survivors(8) were the ones to repopulate and later disperse to other continents via land bridges 20-30 thousand years ago.Also the women wouldn't be that closely related had the time passed that I am talking about between Eden and the flood. I'm suggesting something along the line of 30-40 thousand year differences. Eden being around 60,000 years ago and the flood somewhere between 20 and 30,000 years ago. This of course depends on the populations increasing dramatically which then ties back with one of my earlier points about whether long life spans are possible, (see post #26)btw, what are people's thoughts about post #21

You're right, that did sound a little shady. My reference is the Hugh Ross book, The Genesis question. I realize that that might not seem legitimate to you so I will look into something else. Also, it would be nice if someone would also put in the effort to reference the comment about "concentration of genetic damage" being too aparent after a few generations as opposed to many as in proposed in post #27.
Thanks

Hugh Ross is trustworthy on physics and astrophysics, he really knows his stuff there. He is not trustworthy in biology; he is pretty ignorant and lets his prejudices color his opinions. It's a shame.I find a Web reference that indicates that inbreeding has a significant effect on the first generation in humans. From Inbreeding Depression and the Evolutionary Advantage of Outbreeding:

Inbreeding depression can be defined as the reduction in fitness of offspring derived from mating between relatives (inbreeding) compared to offspring resulting from mating among unrelated individuals (outcrossing). The harmful effects of close inbreeding were widely recognized well before any formal scientific investigation into the phenomenon. Indeed, in humans about 42% of offspring from sister-brother marriages die before they reach reproductive age {emphasis added - JRF}, hence most, though not all, cultures have strong traditions with respect to incest. Plant and animal breeders have also known for centuries of the superior vigor and yield associated with outbreeding compared to inbreeding. The importance of inbreeding depression in evolutionary biology was established in 1876 with the publication of a book entitled The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom by Charles Darwin. His extensive experiments involving 57 species of plants indicated that inbreeding depression is a widespread and significant evolutionary force.

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The most likely cause for the reduction of fitness upon inbreeding involves the expression of deleterious recessive alleles. Recessive alleles are expressed in homozygotes but remain unexpressed when they occur with a dominant allele in heterozygotes. Deleterious alleles originate when the underlying DNA sequence of a functional allele is altered by mutation to code for a gene product which is either harmful or simply doesn't work. Since mutation is a universal feature of DNA, all plant or animal populations contain deleterious recessive alleles. At any given locus, however, deleterious alleles are usually so rare that offspring produced through matings among unrelated individuals are almost never homozygous for harmful alleles. With inbreeding the odds of producing an offspring homozygous for a deleterious allele are much higher. Because rare deleterious mutations are transmitted along family lines, brothers and sisters are much more likely to carrying the same deleterious alleles than unrelated individuals.

Now, there certainly could be other factors involved (e.g. perhaps brother-sister pairs who have children tend to be bad at caring for children) but genetic effects have to be part of the high death rate.Some pretty technical discussion at Inbreeding and Quantitative Genetics.

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Also the women wouldn't be that closely related had the time passed that I am talking about between Eden and the flood.

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Even so, you still have a very closely related group. The sons are very closely related to mom and dad-- you can't get much closer. So 5/8-ths of the group are as close as you can get-- Mom, Dad, and sons 1,2 and 3. Assume distantly related wives for the sons and we get 8 people. But the very next generation would have to marry first cousins at best. That doubles the chances of offspring being born with genetic defects-- from 3-4 percent, to 6-8 percent. I found an article that I'm sure you will find interesting.

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http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy25.html

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Just for arguments sake, if people for some reason were able to live 900 years(bear with me), could it be possible that whatever population started out as could have increased exponentially over time to give us a population diverse enough genetically to justify what we observe today.

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Long lifespans will not give you genetic diversity. What it will give you is hundreds, perhaps, of brothers and sisters. They are ALL very closely related.------------------
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Well, I don't like pulling the babel incident card. Not because I don't think it's legitimate but because it is impossible to test. If it were true however, this would account for genetis diversity. If I were to estimate when babel was, I would think sometime before migration of modern humans to other continents via land bridges 20-30 thousand years ago. I posted something similar in a welcome visitor's post I think.Again, not the answer you're looking for so I apologize but still not something to rule out entirely from my standpoint.

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If it were true however, this would account for genetis diversity.

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No it wouldn't.------------------
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As was already pointed out, no, it wouldn't. The only known effect that can account for the observed genetic diversity is time ... millions of years of it. Mankind did not pass through a genetic bottleneck within the past few million years.Of course, if you want to make up ad-hoc hypotheses for which there's no evidence, you are welcome to do so ... but then you're not doing science. It's also pretty difficult to make up ad-hoc hypotheses that are consistent with all the observed data.

I didn't say it was science. Like I said there would be no way to test it. However if everyone involved in the incident at Babel were altered from one another at the genetic level(I'm not supposing how), and we are probably talking about alot of people, why not could this have spurred genetic diversity? Geniuine question

well if you say so. Come on, you would never let me get away with a response like that. I'm not saying your wrong, I would just like you to elaborate beyond ,"No it wouldn't"

It wouldn't solve the problem for the same reasons that long life spans wouldn't solve it-- you need time for variations to accumulate. In other words, you are making the same mistake you've made before. But now I see you've invoked magic to alter the tower refugee's genomes...------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com[This message has been edited by John, 09-06-2003]

If it happened, it could have. Also, if an invisible pink unicorn created the universe last Thursday, with everything in place as if it were billions of years old, that would account for genetic diversity. And if magic pixies used telekenesis to manipulate our genes that would account for genetic diversity. There's no evidence (not even Biblical evidence) for any of my or your scenarios, and all that we know about how the universe works tells us that my and your scenarios are impossible. As I said, the only known mechanism that accounts for genetic diversity is millions of years.If you want to believe your scenario, fine, that's your right. Just don't claim that it has any scientific basis, or that it's consistent with what science has discovered about the world, or that it should be taught in U.S. public schools as science.

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Even with your dates, you have to have the Xia in China 147 years after the flood. Since Noah and his three sons had to populate Egypt, too, two things are happening incredibly quickly. One, the three sons are having descendants at an incredible rate, and two, those descendants are evolving into different races at an incredible rate.

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According to Genesis 11:7 a miracle of Jehovah came about at the building of the Tower of Babel. Jehovah confounded their languages so the different factions no longer had a common language. So by this the various languages of the races and people originated according to Biblical text. That was given. from there the various language groups scattered over the world. This would still be possible if the oceans hadn't yet settled postflood to their present depth. How long it took for these different groups to adjust to their various colors and appearance is not given, but it may have took some time. And again, since we're talking miracle here, it may have been almost simultaneous with the confounding of the languages. This is how I see it in light of what is observed and what the Bible says. This is not scientific, but then neither was the virgin birth of Jesus. We who believe Jehovah made it all believe he did adjust to suit as need arose.