A proposal, based on ground breaking research supports an exponential reduction in fitness after a population bottleneck. This is now being proposed to support the post-flood age reduction. However scripture better supports the mechanism that I have proposed and more support for these mechanisms is presented. This is part of a series of updates to “S1. Genetics supports day-8 man”.
In a tribute to Carl Wieland, founder of CMI, on his retirement, I found these articles in the section on “Decaying lifespans”:
This tribute showed that Carl was one of the first to propose a genetic mechanism behind the age reduction seen post Noah. It went on to demonstrate that ground breaking research by Dr John Sanford and his colleagues showed that “mutational load leads to an exponential decay of fitness” when going through a population bottleneck. Further, the predicted decay matches that of the post flood life spans.
Hooray! Stop there. Don’t think too much. We have scientific confirmation that the described bottleneck of Noah’s family could cause the observed age reduction. The above articles tend to confirm that longer life spans are quite possible. So what is my problem? First I have got to say that this should not be seen as disrespect to Carl and other workers in the field. I have the utmost respect for Carl.
If you read Update #4 you would notice that I don’t believe God, in His goodness, would initiate a bottleneck if it was going to be deleterious to His children. Now, in my model, the age reduction started perhaps 600 years before the flood with the day-8 men (Sons of God) marrying multiple day-6 women (daughters of men). By the time of the flood, the resultant life span reduction was everywhere in the population and Noah may have been the last to still have the full nominal 1,000 year life span. So the population bottleneck was not causing the reduction, but preserving the best possible lineage to carry on with. It was God’s goodness.
The assumption of lifespan reduction being cause by a bottleneck has problems. The first is that Noah’s son Shem was born before the bottleneck (and possible environmental changes), yet he showed the reduction. In fact the single greatest reduction – 350 years. Also, at this time the actual lifespan of Adam’s descendants was trending upwards to the 1,000 year limit. (You have to exclude Enoch – called up to heaven and Lamech – seemingly drowned in the flood.)
Creationists often point out that the law laid down by Moses forbad intermarriage between close relatives. This was because of accumulated DNA mutations, which by then need to be reduced by avoiding a partner with very similar mutations. I agree. But we can see that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, post Noah, formed a bottleneck, all choosing wives from amongst Terah’s descendants. Abraham’s wife Sarah was actually a half-sister. But clearly their DNA was good enough to start a new lineage through Abraham. Why then should we accept a huge mutational load in Noah’s day?
Even evolutionists have come to recognise that you need small population group for a mutational change to take effect. As a creationist, this is better modelled as a narrowing of the gene pool and the new (restricted) combination of genes spreads through the population. What you are expecting is that the original change becomes increasingly common in the population because more and more of the population inherits the change. So there is, maybe even exponentially, an increase in the prevalence in the population with the changed genes. But what we observe through the line of Shem is an exponentially increasing severity of the effect. The increase in its severity is almost monotonic. So there is something significantly different to a narrowing of the gene pool, or in a single mutation. There seems to be a suggestion that the mutational load itself, is rapidly increasing. However, my model sees a fault in the ability to pass on the genes for longevity. So it’s one fault that is located in a specific area, and exponentially reduces life span.
The next point follows this. Why would the problem level out with life span of 80 odd years? I’m helping my daughter with her calculus homework and differentiation of exponentials. The problems are always presented in some real-world scenario, but whenever you see some asymptotic limit, there is some reason. For example, the equation might represent some bacterial population growth rate limited by a fixed food supply. Now the question here is, where did the 80 year lower limit come from? I don’t know what explanation others can dream up, but my model says that the day-8 DNA lifespan decays to that of the day-6 DNA.
When I looked at the lifespan of Shem’s descendants, I wondered if the bug or mutation was in one of those areas of the DNA which is exclusively passed from father to son. This might explain why every generation in his linage had it, even if a descendant married a woman without the problem. But Noah did not have the problem, implying that Shem got it from his mother and so it was not a male only problem and we might reasonably have expected some more natural variation in his descendant’s life span.
The increasing mutation load proposed is not evidenced in scripture as deformities, but only as life expectancy reduction and intermittent physical size increase. Lack of fitness was not described. Increase in size (height) is occasionally seen today and recognised as mutational, but here, negative side-effects are also observed. However, in the Bible, the Nephilim, were men of renown – no suggestion of a loss of fitness, either there or in the other descendants.
Finally, we tend to forget that God declared the reduction in lifespan to 120 years, quite plainly as a result of the intermarriage at the start of Genesis 6. God does not create deformities or use deformities, only evolutionists. Now we correctly see why God was grieved over the consequences of man’s sin. It was not about random mutations, but was seen by God as a predictable result. …We need to look harder!
My solution fits the data better than some unexplained rapidly increasing mutational load that actually started before the bottleneck. My solution reveals the goodness of God in preserving the best (and blessed) linage. My solution explains exactly when and why the problem developed. My solution explains why intermarriage between close relatives was still acceptable even down to Jacob and Aaron.
My solution was rejected in 2010, not because DNA corruption was unknown then, but because the obvious explanation for the source of the corruption that I offered, namely, the difference between Sons of God and daughters of men, could not be accepted. Though I had offered considerable Biblical support, it was simply too different to existing understandings. Now, the popular existing understandings hold that the Sons of God were demons. This is contrary to scripture (Hebrews 1:5). It is also a defamation of Jesus — as if God would ever inspire words that deny the uniqueness of Jesus, as His only Son in heaven. Is anyone having trouble grasping why we are clinging to the existing understandings?