I’m writing a new book. It’s about the Bible being true, from beginning to end, God’s word to us and God’s promise to us.
I’m having fun with a chapter about Adam and Eve. Yes, they were real people, and there is fantastic scientific evidence for that! This evidence is from genetics, and it is amazing! There is also no other explanation for this evidence other than Adam and Eve were real people.
To appreciate how fantastic this evidence is, start with the most common non-Biblical story of how human beings were created. The Recent African Origins (RAO) theory is that modern humans originated in Africa between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. This explanation also includes the belief that there was, sometime in this distant past, a woman who is the mother of all humanity. They call this woman “mitochondrial Eve.” Mitochondria are energy factories in our cells, and what’s special about them is that they have their own DNA code – called mtDNA — that is passed down from the maternal line. Of course, non-Biblical scientists don’t believe mitochondrial Eve is the Eve of the Bible, they claim she was just a “lucky ancestor” and that the DNA lines from other women died out. But the evidence is clear, even to them, that all mitochondrial DNA from all people alive today can be traced back to a single woman.
Before getting into the science that disproves the RAO theory, step back to consider how patently absurd it is. The RAO theory posits a very small group of sub-human creatures 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, a disastrous population “bottleneck” in which our primate ancestors almost became extinct, and then modern humans came out the other end. Somehow there occurred, in a few generations at most, by random mutations, hundreds of millions of simultaneous exactly perfect changes in our DNA to create modern humans. To me this is obvious nonsense, but evolutionists have no choice but to believe it is true.
Back to science. Scientists have various ways of measuring how fast mitochondria DNA changes. From this they can calculate a “mitochondrial clock” that measures the expected change per generation. Mitochondria DNA has about 16,569 base pairs of DNA coding. The average difference between all people living today is about 22 base pairs.
Here is a quote from the leading American scientific journal Science in 1998:
. . . evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that “mitochondrial Eve”–the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old. No one thinks that’s the case, but at what point should models switch from one mtDNA time zone to the other?
Allow me to translate. Their previous calculations assumed deep time was true, and made a variety of unscientific assumptions to arrive at the 100,000 to 200,000 years ago estimate. But when scientists looked at actual human rate of change, as measured by recent genetic analysis, they calculate their mitochondrial Eve lived about 6,000 years ago! But they refuse to accept their own data – note the “No one thinks that’s the case …” in the above quote!
It’s not just human beings. Mitochondrial “clocks” in fruit flies, roundworms, and water fleas all measure Creation at less than 10,000 years ago.
Scientific papers are here, here, and here if you want to dig into the details.
Not to be outdone, us guys have our own genetic clocks. We inherit our Y-chromosome DNA from our fathers. When scientists compare the variations in Y-chromosome DNA from males around the world, it is also clear that Creation was less than 10,000 years ago. This affirms the Biblical narrative that all males living today are descended from Noah. Here and here are more details on that.
To summarize, human DNA is changing. The rate of these changes can be measured in females using mtDNA and in males using the Y-chromosome. Enormous, mainstream scientific data point to Adam and Eve being real people and living just thousands of years ago.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s a fantastic diagram that compares mtDNA from women around the world. Note the three nodes in the center highlighted by the green arrows – those women were Noah’s three daughters-in-law, with just slight variations from Eve’s original mtDNA:
Click here if you want to see this picture in its full glory.
The Bible is true.
Thanks for reading,
Doug Ell