Venema: Adam, Once More With Feeling

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It is really interesting he does not mention the salient points of what happened in his exchange with Buggs. And then he doubles down:

… we can be confident that finding evidence that we were created separately from other animals or that we descend only from two people just isn’t going to happen. Some ideas in science are so well-supported that it is highly unlikely that new evidence will substantially modify them, and these are among them. The sun is at the center of our solar system, humans evolved, and we evolved as a population

Pretty remarkable. Not sure what to make of that!

Is there any scientific evidence that all humans descended only from two people created de novo, who had no ancestors? Does the scientific consensus say “Humans did not evolve as a population, we evolved from only two people who had no ancestors”?

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Wrong questions. Sorry. That wasn’t what was being discussed. It’s important to be precise.

They’re my questions. Do they have answers?

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Yes they do. Perhaps start a new thread on this off-topic. :slight_smile:

It’s unclear what you’re objecting to.

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Great piece by Dr. Venema. He is right on the mark. This talk of single generation bottleneck of Homo Erectus is mathematical nonsense and foolishness. Human history at 500,000 years ago is being explored in detail with fossils and ancient DNA of many human species alive at the time and spread across Africa and Eurasia.

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I’d have to agree. It seems like the only way the GAE would be possible would be two unique individuals in a much larger population context.

What he says is that his original statement in Adam and the Genome is true WRT modern humans, Homo sapiens, given that simulations showed we could probably detect a bottleneck to 2 within the last 500,000 years (longer than Homo sapiens has existed). Do you disagree with that figure? Or that the conditions would have to be exceptional to allow such a momentary bottleneck?

Which salient points is he missing out from his exchange with Buggs?

Good question.

I have my hands full, and I want to give some time for the BioLogos scientists to correct Venema so I don’t have too. If you read the original exchange closely, or just look at the key premises of the GAE (without going to a GAE model) you’ll see the crux of his error plain as day.