URCall: Common Ancestor

From the ICR’s URCall series of videos, hosted by Markus Lloyd. “Who is our common Mother and Father?” (link)

Transcript:

Geneticists trace humans back to a common mother – a matrilineal ancestor from which all humans descend on their mother’s side – and a common father, from which we all get our father’s genes. Current evolutionary theory places the mother – “mitochondrial Eve” – as having lived in Africa as long as 200,000 years ago, while the father – “Y-chromosomal Adam” – lived as much as 500,000 years ago. While the evolutionists argue over who lived when, Christians have a simple answer: Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve explain why all the variety of people in the world are genetically related.

Christians, as we all know, have never argued over anything. Certainly not about topics that might be related to this subject…

From the scientific – or pedantic – standpoint there are plenty of minor inaccuracies in the above. For example, you don’t receive all of your father’s genes in the form of the Y chromosome – even if I put the apostrophe in the wrong place you still don’t get all of your “fathers’ genes” from there either, and that category only makes much sense as some kind of euphemism anyway.

More importantly the video conveniently omits the part where they explain that tracing back to a common mother doesn’t make her the only mother, or even the only common mother, and the same goes for the father. In fact, the mathematics underlying genealogy mean that the most recent common mother or father was almost certainly much, much more recent than that – the significance of m-Eve and y-Adam is merely the point where the matrilineal and paternal lines coalesce, respectively. This coalescence is inevitable, and to insinuate that they could be a literal Adam and Eve in the sense of YECism is dishonest.

So far as they can be said to be making a coherent argument here, the ICR contends that debate is bad and simply asserting an answer is preferable. Science tries to answer the question of when these people lived and who they were – the same question, in a way – with evidence. But to the ICR it is better to ignore that evidence and substitute your own dogmatic worldview.

But they don’t even do it very well. For one they say that “evolutionists” can’t agree over the when, yet they don’t even bother to give their own figure. This is because, while Ussher’s 4004 BC is most well known, the YECs can’t agree on their actual chronology, and so seem to have largely agreed not to discuss it.

For another even if their stories are true, y-Adam at least is not Adam – he’s Noah. If the global flood really happened then everyone is descended from Noah’s family, of which he is the patriarch. I’m pretty sure that the ICR knows this, but they sure don’t want to admit it. It might make their audience think.

Speaking of thinking, consider this: if “Adam and Eve explain why all the variety of people in the world are genetically related,” how can the ICR consistently explain how all life is genetically related? Common descent doesn’t just stop.