Comments on The BioLogos Statement on Adam and Eve

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Jonathan_Burke

Thanks for the clarification. I think your lack of a public statement on this issue up to today hasn’t been very helpful. Some people may wonder why you chose to do this. I certainly wonder.

The frustrating thing @Jonathan_Burke is that I would have done so immediately. I was hopeful at the time that Venema and Buggs would do a joint statement with me, and Dennis could save face by coming clean. Dennis, unfortunately, did not come clean about his error. I’ve been struggling about how to deal with this ever since.

I may write that article soon.

@Jonathan_Burke

But I haven’t seen any mainstream science that says anything different. All the mainstream science I’ve read say this.

1. Humans arose as a population.
2. The human population never dipped to one pair.
3. Humans are not descended genetically from a single couple who had no ancestors.

Where are all the papers saying humans descended genetically from a single couple who had no ancestors, or (because this is a separate issue), that the human population dipped to a single pair?

Absent other information, of course that what most people think. The problem Venema made was several fold, but at least included this:

1. Arguing that Ne was the minimum, not the long term average. I have never seen this claim in the literature before, because it is just false. It is an invention of Venema’s, in conflict with the literature. This claim only appears in literature that interacts directly with him (i.e. the theological literature). He made it up.

2. Everyone also agrees that the evidence against a bottleneck diminishes as you go back in time. Venema’s claim was about thee positive evidence against, and delineating confidence here has not been a goal of secular scientists. Thee TMR4A work is the first analysis that even attempted to answer that question (other than HLA). Venema did not acknowledge this.

Of note BioLogos still stands by his work here. This is another reason I have had to separate from them. Their scientific work is very shoddy here, and they have been unwilling to fix it, or to admit error. I’ve been labeled “difficult” because I tried to work it out privately with them. In the end, I realize they are going to do their own thing, and I can’t control them. I however am unwilling to be complicit in these ethical lapses again.