Young Earth

[Martin Hash]

I grew up Mormon and when I entered my teenage years, I read everything I could find about Mormonism, which led to a curiosity about religion in general, which led to reading about the Koran, The Teaching of Buddha, and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings. Eventually, a science fiction book, Dune, with its Bene Gesserit sayings, that gave me the insight I needed to reject religion without accepting evolution. With the advent of YouTube, I’ve been able to sate my occasional thirst for religious indoctrination, sometimes to great effect.

Ark Encounter Exhibit at Creation Museum.jpg

Most people I know think the Young Earth Creation Museum in Kentucky with its full-scale model of Noah’s ark is humorous but 60% of Americans believe in it. The museum’s curator has a successful YouTube channel that has some mostly entertaining videos that are thought-provoking if nothing else, however, the 26-part series by geneticist Nathaniel Jeanson is absolutely stunning. In it he convinces me at least, that the human race and all the peoples in it, descend from 4 men at about the time of when they say The Flood occurred. They name the men, Noah and his 3 sons. Now I won’t go that far but, wow, the evidence is very convincing.

Dr. Jeanson uses mutations of the Y-chromosome, carried only by males (the definition of a “female” is someone that does NOT have a Y-chromosome). Each generation of grandfather to father to son to grandson has about the same amount of mutations, so assuming 25 years between generations and what the original chromosome looked like, geneticists can guestimate how long humans have been around and who’s related to who. After sampling people all over the earth and matching with historical facts, Young Earthers have postulated when and where everyone comes from, from the Indians to the Aborigines. The most important piece of evidence for this much-shortened view of human history is the fact that their calculation of human population growth correlates 93% with the known data while the established evolutionary projection matches only 17%. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some arm-waving involved, and trying to fit everything into the Bible causes wild distortions in some of his logic, but focusing only on his objective research, I think science will probably go his way eventually. I’ve got the urge to go see that ark.

Nathaniel Jeanson.jpg

[SuburbanFarmer]

Dating the earth based on ‘lifetimes’ in a single pre-historical religious text vs literally all geologic and archaeological evidence…. Nah I’m good.