In his 6/15/17 Briefing, Dr. Mohler discussed, on the one
hand, this week’s SBC condemnation of racism and white supremacy, and on the
other, recent fossil discoveries by scientists that suggest that our species
may have evolved, not in a single region in East Africa 200,000 years ago, as
previously thought, but as a network of groups spread across the whole African
continent stretching back 300,000 years.
Dr. Mohler emphasized that rejection of racism relies on belief in the unity of humanity, and that Christians "ground the unity of the entire human race in the fact that we all have ultimately one human father and one human mother known in the Scripture as Adam and Eve.” So, in Dr. Mohler’s view, this revision of the evolutionary narrative of human origins poses an even more serious problem for the unity of humanity, and so for equal respect, than evolutionary theory already did:
“... the unity of the human race is made not only implausible, it’s impossible in terms of this telling of the story.... One of the biggest questions we should have ... [for] evolutionary scientists is how exactly they would argue for the unity of the human race. Taken at face value, these media reports concerning the scientific research would seem to undermine utterly any claims for the unity of humanity and that puts us in a very bad position [morally].”
Although not an evolutionary scientist, I will answer Dr. Mohler’s question. What Dr. Mohler’s discussion lacks is the concept of a ‘gene pool’, defined as “the stock of different genes in an interbreeding population.”
If different groups of proto-humans had evolved separately in different places, and stayed put, and never mixed in any way until the present day, the chances are they would not even be a single species today. But that is very far from what is being claimed. The idea is that there were many different groups spread across Africa, but that there was (perhaps only occasionally) interbreeding between them, so that successful genes spread through the various groups over time. Since those early times there has been a great deal of mixing, so that we all share many ancestors from many different places.
This fact – that we all belong to the same gene pool – is the basis for the unity of humanity. We are all different but we also all share an overwhelming amount. The fact is that, biologically, there are no races. Genetic diversity is far more multifarious and overlapping than division into a few racial groups is capable of describing. (See the works of Cavalli-Sforza.) You see this in the recent TV ads for “23 and me”, where people are discovering, from a test of their DNA, their many different ancestral origins.
Even if we all don't share a single pair of human parents, we still – according to the scientific/secular worldview – belong to the same extended human family.
Dr. Mohler emphasized that rejection of racism relies on belief in the unity of humanity, and that Christians "ground the unity of the entire human race in the fact that we all have ultimately one human father and one human mother known in the Scripture as Adam and Eve.” So, in Dr. Mohler’s view, this revision of the evolutionary narrative of human origins poses an even more serious problem for the unity of humanity, and so for equal respect, than evolutionary theory already did:
“... the unity of the human race is made not only implausible, it’s impossible in terms of this telling of the story.... One of the biggest questions we should have ... [for] evolutionary scientists is how exactly they would argue for the unity of the human race. Taken at face value, these media reports concerning the scientific research would seem to undermine utterly any claims for the unity of humanity and that puts us in a very bad position [morally].”
Although not an evolutionary scientist, I will answer Dr. Mohler’s question. What Dr. Mohler’s discussion lacks is the concept of a ‘gene pool’, defined as “the stock of different genes in an interbreeding population.”
If different groups of proto-humans had evolved separately in different places, and stayed put, and never mixed in any way until the present day, the chances are they would not even be a single species today. But that is very far from what is being claimed. The idea is that there were many different groups spread across Africa, but that there was (perhaps only occasionally) interbreeding between them, so that successful genes spread through the various groups over time. Since those early times there has been a great deal of mixing, so that we all share many ancestors from many different places.
This fact – that we all belong to the same gene pool – is the basis for the unity of humanity. We are all different but we also all share an overwhelming amount. The fact is that, biologically, there are no races. Genetic diversity is far more multifarious and overlapping than division into a few racial groups is capable of describing. (See the works of Cavalli-Sforza.) You see this in the recent TV ads for “23 and me”, where people are discovering, from a test of their DNA, their many different ancestral origins.
Even if we all don't share a single pair of human parents, we still – according to the scientific/secular worldview – belong to the same extended human family.
No comments:
Post a Comment